1030 All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.
1031 The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned.604 The Church formulated her doctrine of faith on Purgatory especially at the Councils of Florence and Trent. the tradition of the Church, by reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire:605
As for certain lesser faults, we must believe that, before the Final Judgment, there is a purifying fire. He who is truth says that whoever utters blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will be pardoned neither in this age nor in the age to come. From this sentence we understand that certain offenses can be forgiven in this age, but certain others in the age to come.606
1032 This teaching is also based on the practice of prayer for the dead, already mentioned in Sacred Scripture: “Therefore Judas Maccabeus] made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin.”607 From the beginning the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice, so that, thus purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God.608 The Church also commends almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance undertaken on behalf of the dead:
Let us help and commemorate them. If Job’s sons were purified by their father’s sacrifice, why would we doubt that our offerings for the dead bring them some consolation? Let us not hesitate to help those who have died and to offer our prayers for them.609
Purgatory Explained – by Scott Hahn
Evidence for Purgatory in the Gospel | Catholic Answers Podcasts
1038 The resurrection of all the dead, “of both the just and the unjust,”621 will precede the Last Judgment. This will be “the hour when all who are in the tombs will hear [the Son of man’s] voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.”622 Then Christ will come “in his glory, and all the angels with him …. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left…. and they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”623
1039 In the presence of Christ, who is Truth itself, the truth of each man’s relationship with God will be laid bare.624 The Last Judgment will reveal even to its furthest consequences the good each person has done or failed to do during his earthly life:
All that the wicked do is recorded, and they do not know. When “our God comes, he does not keep silence.”. . . he will turn towards those at his left hand: . . . “I placed my poor little ones on earth for you. I as their head was seated in heaven at the right hand of my Father – but on earth my members were suffering, my members on earth were in need. If you gave anything to my members, what you gave would reach their Head. Would that you had known that my little ones were in need when I placed them on earth for you and appointed them your stewards to bring your good works into my treasury. But you have placed nothing in their hands; therefore you have found nothing in my presence.”625
1040 The Last Judgment will come when Christ returns in glory. Only the Father knows the day and the hour; only he determines the moment of its coming. Then through his Son Jesus Christ he will pronounce the final word on all history. We shall know the ultimate meaning of the whole work of creation and of the entire economy of salvation and understand the marvellous ways by which his Providence led everything towards its final end. the Last Judgment will reveal that God’s justice triumphs over all the injustices committed by his creatures and that God’s love is stronger than death.626
1041 The message of the Last Judgment calls men to conversion while God is still giving them “the acceptable time, . . . the day of salvation.”627 It inspires a holy fear of God and commits them to the justice of the Kingdom of God. It proclaims the “blessed hope” of the Lord’s return, when he will come “to be glorified in his saints, and to be marvelled at in all who have believed.”628
PURGATORY: When a nun covered in flames appeared to St. Faustina
Sins need to be cleansed in purgatory
When we incur guilt and our souls incur deformity… Catholic priest explains.
Where is the word “Purgatory” in the Bible
MUST SEE: Where Can I Find Purgatory In Scripture? – William Albrecht
PURGATORY: SANTA FAUSTINA
Pray for the souls of purgatory
Different levels in purgatory, even some joy in the highest levels
The levels of purgatory
LEVELS OF PURGATORY AKA PARADISE
¿A dónde van los niños abortados?
Oración para la reconciliación con los niños no nacidos
Brevemente, estos son los actos que deben realizar un hombre o una mujer responsables que han sufrido la pérdida de un hijo:
• Pedir perdón a Dios por la responsabilidad que haya podido tener en que se malograra ese embarazo y confesarse.
• Darle un nombre al niño, bien pidiendo a Jesús Eucaristía que lo inspire, bien eligiéndolo uno mismo.
• En la oración, pedid perdón al niño por las heridas del rechazo o por no haber podido darle una sepultura conveniente y que no haya recibido el sacramento del Bautismo.
• Orar por su sanación y por la propia sanación interior; declararle el propio amor, el actual deseo de acogerlo como regalo de Dios, de darle la vida.
• Encargar una misa por el eterno descanso de ese niño, a fin de que Dios le haya concedido el Bautismo de deseo (Dios, que conoce el pasado, presente y futuro, puede haberle dado ese regalo al morir en atención a las oraciones que se hagan hoy), y asistir a ella para dar gracias a Dios y devolvérselo libremente con la oración siguiente:
Oración
La vida de todo ser humano está en tus manos, Señor Jesús, y dijiste: “El que acoja a un niño como este en mi nombre, me acoge a mí (Mt 18,5)”.
Acepto ahora el niño que me diste sin que fuera consciente de ello, lo acojo en tu amor y declaro que lo amo como tú lo amas; lo recibo de ti como un gran regalo, en mi seno, para que crezca, mes tras mes, hasta su nacimiento. Deseo darle la vida para que sea feliz. Este niño muy amado, te lo devuelvo de todo corazón, lo entrego a tu Madre, a mi Madre, a su Madre, la Virgen María, al pie de la Cruz, para que lo ponga en tu costado abierto, en tu Corazón Traspasado. Oh Jesús, Señor Misericordioso, cúrame y libera completamente mi espíritu de todo recuerdo doloroso y de todo trauma por la pérdida de este hijo. Libera a mi hijo y a mí mismo de todo dominio del espíritu de muerte. Sana a mi hijo de todas sus heridas de rechazo y de falta de amor que haya podido sentir al malograrse su gestación. Cólmalo de tu paz y de tu alegría para que exulte en ti eternamente. Amén.
The levels of Purgatory – Minute 18′
What’s the Deal with Limbo? Did Limbo get canceled? Or are Catholics still allowed to believe in it?
1023 Those who die in God’s grace and friendship and are perfectly purified live for ever with Christ. They are like God for ever, for they “see him as he is,” face to face:596
By virtue of our apostolic authority, we define the following: According to the general disposition of God, the souls of all the saints . . . and other faithful who died after receiving Christ’s holy Baptism (provided they were not in need of purification when they died, . . . or, if they then did need or will need some purification, when they have been purified after death, . . .) already before they take up their bodies again and before the general judgment – and this since the Ascension of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into heaven – have been, are and will be in heaven, in the heavenly Kingdom and celestial paradise with Christ, joined to the company of the holy angels. Since the Passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, these souls have seen and do see the divine essence with an intuitive vision, and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature.597
1024 This perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity – this communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed – is called “heaven.” Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness.
1025 To live in heaven is “to be with Christ.” the elect live “in Christ,”598 but they retain, or rather find, their true identity, their own name.599
For life is to be with Christ; where Christ is, there is life, there is the kingdom.600
1026 By his death and Resurrection, Jesus Christ has “opened” heaven to us. the life of the blessed consists in the full and perfect possession of the fruits of the redemption accomplished by Christ. He makes partners in his heavenly glorification those who have believed in him and remained faithful to his will. Heaven is the blessed community of all who are perfectly incorporated into Christ.
1027 This mystery of blessed communion with God and all who are in Christ is beyond all understanding and description. Scripture speaks of it in images: life, light, peace, wedding feast, wine of the kingdom, the Father’s house, the heavenly Jerusalem, paradise: “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.”601
1028 Because of his transcendence, God cannot be seen as he is, unless he himself opens up his mystery to man’s immediate contemplation and gives him the capacity for it. the Church calls this contemplation of God in his heavenly glory “the beatific vision”:
How great will your glory and happiness be, to be allowed to see God, to be honored with sharing the joy of salvation and eternal light with Christ your Lord and God, . . . to delight in the joy of immortality in the Kingdom of heaven with the righteous and God’s friends.602
1029 In the glory of heaven the blessed continue joyfully to fulfill God’s will in relation to other men and to all creation. Already they reign with Christ; with him “they shall reign for ever and ever.”603
Levels of Heaven & Hell: What are They? – Explaining the Faith with Fr. Chris Alar
1021 Death puts an end to human life as the time open to either accepting or rejecting the divine grace manifested in Christ.590 The New Testament speaks of judgment primarily in its aspect of the final encounter with Christ in his second coming, but also repeatedly affirms that each will be rewarded immediately after death in accordance with his works and faith. the parable of the poor man Lazarus and the words of Christ on the cross to the good thief, as well as other New Testament texts speak of a final destiny of the soul -a destiny which can be different for some and for others.591
1022 Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of heaven-through a purification592 or immediately,593-or immediate and everlasting damnation.594
At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love.595
Consciousness after Death Established | Catholic Answers Podcasts
1033 We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: “He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”610 Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren.611 To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called “hell.”
1034 Jesus often speaks of “Gehenna” of “the unquenchable fire” reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted, where both soul and body can be lost.612 Jesus solemnly proclaims that he “will send his angels, and they will gather . . . all evil doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire,”613 and that he will pronounce the condemnation: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!”614
1035 The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, “eternal fire.”615 The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.
1036 The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon man to make use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny. They are at the same time an urgent call to conversion: “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”616
Since we know neither the day nor the hour, we should follow the advice of the Lord and watch constantly so that, when the single course of our earthly life is completed, we may merit to enter with him into the marriage feast and be numbered among the blessed, and not, like the wicked and slothful servants, be ordered to depart into the eternal fire, into the outer darkness where “men will weep and gnash their teeth.”617
1037 God predestines no one to go to hell;618 for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want “any to perish, but all to come to repentance”:619
Father, accept this offering
from your whole family.
Grant us your peace in this life,
save us from final damnation,
and count us among those you have chosen.620
Levels of Heaven & Hell: What are They?
– Explaining the Faith with Fr. Chris Alar
Father Steven Scheier’s Judgment Experience
Father Steven Scheier judgment experience SECOND interview with Mother Angelica
Hell: Man Shot & Saw Hell – Shocking Must-See Video
EL INFIERNO: LXIV. El Infierno de los condenados y Cristo
631 Jesus “descended into the lower parts of the earth. He who descended is he who also ascended far above all the heavens.”475 The Apostles’ Creed confesses in the same article Christ’s descent into hell and his Resurrection from the dead on the third day, because in his Passover it was precisely out of the depths of death that he made life spring forth: Christ, that Morning Star, who came back from the dead, and shed his peaceful light on all mankind, your Son who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.476
Paragraph 2. ON THE THIRD DAY HE ROSE FROM THE DEAD
632 The frequent New Testament affirmations that Jesus was “raised from the dead” presuppose that the crucified one sojourned in the realm of the dead prior to his resurrection.477 This was the first meaning given in the apostolic preaching to Christ’s descent into hell: that Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead. But he descended there as Saviour, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there.478
633 Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, “hell” – Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek – because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God.479 Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into “Abraham’s bosom”:480 “It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Saviour in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell.”481 Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.482
634 “The gospel was preached even to the dead.”483 The descent into hell brings the Gospel message of salvation to complete fulfilment. This is the last phase of Jesus’ messianic mission, a phase which is condensed in time but vast in its real significance: the spread of Christ’s redemptive work to all men of all times and all places, for all who are saved have been made sharers in the redemption.
635 Christ went down into the depths of death so that “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”484 Jesus, “the Author of life”, by dying destroyed “him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and [delivered] all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.”485 Henceforth the risen Christ holds “the keys of Death and Hades”, so that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.”486
Today a great silence reigns on earth, a great silence and a great stillness. A great silence because the King is asleep. the earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. . . He has gone to search for Adam, our first father, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow Adam in his bonds and Eve, captive with him – He who is both their God and the son of Eve. . . “I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. . . I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead.”487
IN BRIEF
636 By the expression “He descended into hell”, the Apostles’ Creed confesses that Jesus did really die and through his death for us conquered death and the devil “who has the power of death” (Heb 2:14).
637 In his human soul united to his divine person, the dead Christ went down to the realm of the dead. He opened heaven’s gates for the just who had gone before him.
WHY IS HELL ETERNAL?
This scary glimpse of Hell should make you think long and hard about joining Satan
The absolute loneliness and lack of God in hell
Upon the Four Principal Gates of Hell
– St. Alphonsus Liguori
Most people in hell believed Hell did not exist
VISIONS OF HELL BY JOSEPHA MENENDEZ
Catholic priest explains why hell is a grace (for the fallen angels)
HELL IS THE LONELIEST PLACE
THERE IS NO RELATIONSHIP IN HELL
Is Hell Empty? | Msgr. Stephen Rossetti
The Existence of Hell: Revealed by Our Good Lord
Knowing Up From Down Heaven & Hell
A Letter from Hell
Lo que dice la Iglesia con comentarios de San Josemaría
El cielo, la muerte, el purgatorio. ¿Qué son los Novísimos?
Hell: Faustina Kowalska: “I have seen hell, I will tell you what happens, I beg you, please listen to me!”
“If you lived an evil life, there is often a manifestation of evil (at the moment of your death).”
Catholic priest explains: Fun people seem to go to Hell & Preservation of youth among celebrities
Is Judas in Hell?
Demons obey Christ in exorcism sessions
ABSOLUTE MUST SEE VIDEO TESTIMONY OF PRIEST
When Jesus sentenced this priest to hell for eternity
St Gemma meditating on Hell and her sins
SANTA ESCRITURA DE LA BIBLIA SOBRE La ira del Señor
Lecturas
Primera Lectura Eclo 5, 1-8.
No tardes en convertirte al Señor.
Lectura del libro del Eclesiástico. NO confíes en tus riquezas, ni digas: «Con esto me basta». No sigas tu instinto y tu fuerza, secundando las pasiones de tu corazón. Y no digas: «Quién puede dominarme?», o bien: «Quién logrará someterme por lo que he hecho?», porque el Señor ciertamente te castigará. No digas: «He pecado, y ¿qué me ha pasado?», porque el Señor sabe esperar. Del perdón no te sientas tan seguro, mientras acumulas pecado tras pecado. Y no digas: «Es grande su compasión, me perdonará mis muchos pecados», porque él tiene compasión y cólera, y su ira recae sobre los malvados. No tardes en convertirte al Señor, ni lo dejes de un día para otro, porque de repente la ira del Señor se enciende, y el día del castigo perecerás. No confíes en riquezas injustas, porque de nada te servirán el día de la desgracia.
Palabra de Dios.
Fr. Joseph Iannuzzi: Saving souls from Hell
HE DIED AND MET GOD, AND HE WASN’T READY.
The incredible near-death experience of Fr. Rick Wendell.
¿Cómo librarse del infierno??
-Libro de Tobías – Te Explico la Biblia Episodio – 6
No priest goes to hell or to heaven alone…
He always takes others with him – Don Bosco
Hell is torture and solitary confinement deprived of God
Catholic priest explains: Majority in Hell now are there because they didn’t believe there’s Hell.
Psaumes 63: 10,11: Mais eux cherchent à m’ôter la vie: ils iront dans les profondeurs de la terre. On les livrera au glaive, ils seront la proie des chacals.
SALMS 63:10,11: But those who seek my life will come to ruin;
they shall go down to the depths of the netherworld!
Those who would hand over my life to the sword shall
675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers.573 The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth574 will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. the supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.575
676 The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgement. the Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism,576 especially the “intrinsically perverse” political form of a secular messianism.577
677 The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection.578 The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven.579 God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgement after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.580
Father Chad Ripperger breaks down the End Times
END TIMES
END TIMES – 666 NUMBER – THE MARK OF THE BEAST
DO NOT LOOK FOR THE DAY AND THE HOUR
PRIVATE APPARTITIONS ON END TIMES
ABSOLUTE MUST SEE: GOD WILL PROTECT THE ONES MARKED BY THE SIGN OF THE CROSS
REVELATION” THE SIGN OF PROTECTION IS THE MARK OF THE CROSS
THE ANTICHRIST
ABSOLUTE MUST SEE: MILLENIAL REIGN – THE THOUSAND YEARS
Fr. Joseph Iannuzzi: Christ will reign physically on earth before the final coming. This is heresy.
END TIMES: CROSS IN THE HEAVEN
Evangelio de San Mateo: Después de crucificarlo, los soldados sortearon sus vestiduras y se las repartieron; 36 y sentándose allí, se quedaron para custodiarlo. 37 Colocaron sobre su cabeza una inscripción con el motivo de su condena: «Este es Jesús, el rey de los judíos». 38 Al mismo tiempo, fueron crucificados con él dos bandidos, uno a su derecha y el otro a su izquierda. 39 Los que pasaban, lo insultaban y, moviendo la cabeza, 40 decían: «Tú, que destruyes el Templo y en tres días lo vuelves a edificar, ¡sálvate a ti mismo, si eres Hijo de Dios, y baja de la cruz!». 41 De la misma manera, los sumos sacerdotes, junto con los escribas y los ancianos, se burlaban, diciendo: 42 «¡Ha salvado a otros y no puede salvarse a sí mismo! Es rey de Israel: que baje ahora de la cruz y creeremos en él. 43 Ha confiado en Dios; que él lo libre ahora si lo ama, ya que él dijo: “Yo soy Hijo de Dios”». 44 También lo insultaban los bandidos crucificados con él. (Mt 27, 36-44)
SAINT LOUIS MARIA GRIGNON DE MONTFORT – Del Camino Real de la Santa Cruz
Esta palabra parece dura a muchos: Niégate a ti mismo, toma tu cruz, y sigue a Jesús. Pero mucho más duro será oír aquella postrera palabra: Apartaos de mí, malditos, al fuego eterno. Pues los que ahora oyen y siguen de buena voluntad la palabra de la cruz, no temerán entonces oír la palabra de la eterna condenación. Esta señal de la cruz estará en el cielo, cuando el Señor ven-drá a juzgar. Entonces todos los siervos de la cruz, que se conformaron en la vida con el crucificado, se llegarán a Cristo juez con gran confianza. Pues que así es, ¿por qué teméis tomar la cruz, por la cual se va al reino? En la cruz está la salud, en la cruz la vida, en la cruz está la defensa de los enemigos, en la cruz está la infusión de la suavidad soberana, en la cruz está la fortaleza del corazón, en la cruz está el gozo del espíritu, en la cruz está la suma virtud, en la cruz está la perfección de la santidad. No está la salud del alma, ni la esperanza de la vida eterna, sino en la cruz. Toma, pues, tu cruz, y sigue a Jesús, e irás a la vida eterna. El vino primero, y llevó su cruz y murió en la cruz por ti; porque tú también la lleves, y desees morir en ella. Porque si murieres juntamente con El, vivirás con El. Y si fueres compañero de la pena, lo serás también de la gloria.
END TIMES: A TIME OF PEACE
Satan will be enchained by the Rosary
THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
Are We Living in a Special Time?
by Tom Cabeen
A long-standing and very prominent Watchtower teaching is the belief that in 1914 a special period of time Jesus called the “Gentile Times” ended, the “last days” began, and Christ began to rule over the whole earth for the first time since his resurrection and ascension to heaven. Immediately prior to that time, Jesus, in anticipation of his imminent reign, began inspecting the religious organizations of the world to see which one would be his official representative when he began to rule. He examined the teachings of all religions on earth claiming to be Christian and decided that the most “faithful” one (meaning the one with the most correct interpretation of the Bible) was the small group of Charles Russell’s followers, later to be known as Jehovah’s Witnesses. As a result, Watchtower publications teach, shortly after 1914 Jesus committed all the interests of his kingdom into their hands, and they became his only approved channel of communication between God and mankind. If this teaching is true, something very significant changed in 1914. Things must be different since 1914 than they were for the rest of the Christian era. If this is true, that would add some evidence to the idea that, as they claim, the Watchtower Society, with its origins in the nineteenth century, is the only denomination which God approves. On the other hand, if the weight of scriptural and historical evidence points away from this conclusion, any group which proclaims this idea, including the Watchtower Society, is suspect. If we hold the idea that we are now living in a special time, we may have to reevaluate our views. Since its origin, fundamental teachings of the Watchtower Society have been based on and intimately tied to the idea that serious Bible students could determine with reasonable accuracy when Christ would return, either through chronological calculations or observation of unique world events which would serve as a sign of Christ’s imminent return or advent (or both). Generically, Christians who believe that to be possible have been called “Adventists”. First, let us examine the chronology which, according to their claims, establishes that 1914 marked the end of one special time period and the beginning of another. Is Watchtower Chronology Sound? Charles T. Russell borrowed his chronology and methodology from the Second Adventists, after William Miller’s failed attempt at predicting Christ’s return in 1843, based on the same methodology. The calculations are based largely on interpretations of passages in Daniel 4 and Luke 21:24. In brief, Witnesses teach that the “Gentile Times” is a special period of 2,520 years during which God’s kingdom, David’s dynasty, had no king. It supposedly began when Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and ended in 1914. Considering the importance of the conclusions it supports, the chronology is based on a rather tenuous series of assumptions: First, that the dream Nebuchadnezzar had about becoming a beast for “seven times” (recorded in Daniel 2) does not refer primarily to him (as stated directly in the text), but rather that he, a pagan king, not even a worshiper of Israel’s God, actually represents God’s kingdom. Are We Living in a Special Time? Page 2 of 9 Second, that God’s kingdom or rulership over mankind somehow “ended” when Zerubbabel, a direct descendent of David, was removed from the throne of Jerusalem when it was destroyed by Babylon, and that the kingdom would “begin” again some twenty-five centuries later when Jesus, a descendent of David, began to rule in 1914. The Jews expected a descendent of David to rule as king forever, but the concept of God’s kingdom “ending” and “beginning” is never suggested in the Jewish sacred writings, and in fact directly contradicts Daniel 4:17, which is specifically connected to Nebuchadnezzar’s beastly experience! Third, based on the first assumption, each “time” must represent a special “prophetic” year of 360 days, although no actual earthly year, solar or lunar, has 360 days.1 Seven of these 360-day prophetic years would add up to a total of 2,520 “prophetic” days2 . To make this assumption even more shaky, each of these “prophetic” days in turn must represent a solar year of approximately 365¼ days. Absolutely nothing in Scripture, Jewish tradition, or the writings of early Christians even suggests that we make this complicated series of assumptions and calculations. Fourth, that this period of 2,520 solar years are identical to what Jesus referred to when he used the expression translated “the appointed times of the nations” or “the times of the Gentiles” in Luke 21:24 (“Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled…”), even though Jesus was specifically discussing the future destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD, not its past destruction by Babylon, and despite the fact that there is not a single word in Scripture, Jewish tradition or Christian writings that indicates that the “Gentile times” refer to any time period during which God’s eternal kingdom would be inactive. Fifth, that Jerusalem was actually destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar’s armies in 607 BC. The date for Jerusalem’s destruction is one of the most accurately fixed of ancient history. More, significantly, the historical sources that establish the date for Babylon’s fall in 539 BC, (which date the Watchtower Society does accept and, in fact, which it uses as the starting point for its 1914 calculations) are exactly the same sources that establish 587/6 BC as the date for Jerusalem’s destruction! Several independent lines of evidence (historical, astronomical, archeological, etc.) point to the date of 587/86 BC, not 607 BC, as the date of Jerusalem’s destruction. There is not a single line of historical evidence which supports the 607 BC date. (See The Gentile Times Reconsidered, Carl Olof Jonsson, Commentary Press, 1998 for a detailed discussion of this topic.) 1 The Aramaic word Daniel used for “time” just means a period of time, not always a year. (The word for “year” is different, as used, for example, in Daniel 1:1 ). The word used in Daniel 4 is `idd’n, which , according to the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament means “time, period, span, year, era. … Two basic meanings are equally a ‘point’ in time or a ‘span’ of time.” In this context, a “time” could easily mean a week, a month or a season. 2 A reader pointed out that Revelation 11:2-3 relates “times” to days in a different way: “But as for the courtyard that is outside the temple [sanctuary], cast it clear out and do not measure it, because it has been given to the nations, and they will trample the holy city underfoot for forty-two months. And I will cause my two witnesses to prophesy a thousand two hundred and sixty days dressed in sackcloth.” (NWT) Here the wording is quite similar to that in Luke 21:24: (“Jerusalem will be trampled on by the nations”). The Greek word for ”trample” is the same in both passages, and both speak of Jerusalem, the “holy city.” This text describes a period of “trampling” lasting fortytwo months or 1,260 days rather than 2,520! To be consistent, WT theologians should use this passage to determine the length of a “time” rather than Daniel 4. Are We Living in a Special Time? Page 3 of 9 Sixth, that all the plain passages in the Greek Scriptures that clearly state that Jesus began ruling in the first century, such as Matthew 28:18: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me…” don’t really mean what they say. Below is a more extended discussion of the implications of this assumption. Each of the six assumptions listed above are interrelated. All must be true before the Watchtower conclusion can be accepted with any degree of confidence. Again, the veracity of all of them together are absolutely critical to the Watchtower teaching that humankind is living in the time of the end and that the Watchtower Society has been chosen by Jesus Christ as Jehovah’s organization and, as such, His official channel of communication with his faithful people on earth. If any one of them is wrong, the final conclusion is invalid and the Watchtower claim is demonstrably false. It is worth noting that C. T. Russell, founder of Jehovah’s Witnesses, used exactly the same methodology to “prove” that he was living in a special time period, which would end in 1914 with Christ’s return to judge the nations. He also admitted that if any one of the assumptions upon which he based his conclusions were wrong, it would prove his entire approach would be completely invalid. That did, in fact, happen. In time, not only did every one of his assumptions get rejected, Russell’s ending date for the time of the end (1914) became the starting date for the same period, according to current Watchtower teaching. When Did Jesus Begin to Reign? If the Watchtower chronology is invalid and Jesus did not begin reigning in 1914, is he reigning now? If so, when did that reign start? Watchtower publications interpret Hebrews 1:13 (“Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”) as follows: “In 33 C.E., [Jesus] died, was resurrected, and ascended to heaven. … At that time, however, Jesus did not act as King and Judge over the nations. He was seated next to God, awaiting the time to act as King of God’s Kingdom. Paul wrote of him: “With reference to which one of the angels has he ever said: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I place your enemies as a stool for your feet’?” (Hebrews 1:13) Jehovah’s Witnesses have published much evidence that Jesus’ period of waiting expired in 1914, when he became ruler of God’s Kingdom in the invisible heavens.” —The Watchtower, 10/15/95, pg 21, par. 14-16 Hebrews 10: 12, 13 refers to the same action by Jesus, in these words: “But when this priest [Jesus] had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool.” (Emphasis mine.) Here the author quotes from Psalm 110: 13 If this were the only reference to Psalm 110 in the Christian Scriptures, and there was nothing else to indicate otherwise, this verse from Hebrews might be interpreted to mean that the word “waits” in this passage refers to a period of nonrulership, which is exactly how the Watchtower Society interprets it: “Even after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension to heaven, he had to wait at his Father’s right hand until the time came for him to rule as King over mankind. (Hebrews 10:12, 13)” —The Watchtower, 6/15/94, pg 6 But is this how the apostles and early Christians understood the expression “sit at my right 3 “Jehovah declared to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies as a stool for your feet.’” NW Are We Living in a Special Time? Page 4 of 9 hand”? No! Among many ancient peoples, the imagery of a king sitting on the throne of his God was a common way to express that the king ruled with the approval and support of his God, which is consistent with how early Christians understood this phrase.4 This is not the only place where this expression from Psalm 110 is quoted in the Christian Greek Scriptures. This passage from the Hebrew Scriptures is the one most often quoted in Christian Scripture. So we can examine a number of its appearances to correctly establish just how it was used and to what arguments it was applied as support. The Watchtower interpretation that “sitting” meant “waiting” is required by their chronology-based belief that Jesus could not begin his reign until 1914, as discussed above. But it is quite clear from many other passages that the early Christians did not understand the passage to mean that. They understood the phrase “sitting at God’s right hand” to mean that Jesus was already ruling as king. One very clear example of this is Paul’s citation of Psalm 110 in his first letter to the Corinthians while discussing the resurrection. Paul actually substitutes the term “rule as king” for “sit at God’s right hand” in the source from which he quotes: Next, the end, when he hands over the kingdom to his God and Father, when he has brought to nothing all government and all authority and power. For he must rule as king until [God] has put all enemies under his feet. As the last enemy, death is to be brought to nothing. … But when all things will have been subjected to him, then the Son himself will also subject himself to the One who subjected all things to him, that God may be all things to everyone. —1 Cor 15:24-28 NW (Italics added.) It is clear from his use of the passage that Paul understood “placing all things under Christ’s feet” to mean rulership. Why should that not be the case, since after his resurrection, Jesus explicitly stated that he had been given “all authority in heaven and on earth.” When Jesus was born, the angel Gabriel said that he would be given the throne of David his forefather, and that he would reign forever. So it would be most natural for the apostles to understand his post-resurrection words to mean that he was reigning as their king, even if the way in which he was to rule turned out to be different from what they expected. The psalmist’s statement that he was to reign in the midst of his enemies is consistent with the idea that his rulership expands until, by the end of his reign, all things are under his feet. A great resurrection occurs at that time; thus death becomes the last enemy to be subject to him. The image is that of a ruler who sits down on his throne, at the right hand of his God, and continues to rule until all things are subject to his power. Afterward, Paul writes, the Son subjects himself to God, the Father. Other passages show that the apostles and early disciples viewed Jesus as ruling as king in their day. Several of these quote Psalm 110. Here are but a few (all quoted from the New World Translation, 1971 ed.): Matt 28:18-20: Jesus approached and spoke to them, saying: “All authority has been given me in heaven and on the earth. Go therefore and make disciples of people of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy 4 See The Gentile Times Reconsidered, 3rd Ed., Carl Olof Jonsson, Commentary Press, 1998, pg 264-270. Are We Living in a Special Time? Page 5 of 9 spirit, teaching them to observe all the things I have commanded YOU. And, look! I am with YOU all the days until the conclusion of the system of things.” Mark 16:19: So, then, the Lord Jesus, after having spoken to them, was taken up to heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. John 5:26, 27: For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted also to the Son to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to do judging, because Son of man he is. John 17:1, 2: Jesus spoke these things, and, raising his eyes to heaven, he said: “Father, the hour has come; glorify your son, that your son may glorify you, according as you have given him authority over all flesh, that, as regards the whole [number] whom you have given him, he may give them everlasting life. Col 2:9, 10: …it is in him that all the fullness of the divine quality dwells bodily. And so YOU are possessed of a fullness by means of him, who is the head of all government and authority. Acts 17:6, 7: …they dragged Jason and certain brothers to the city rulers, crying out: “These men that have overturned the inhabited earth are present here also, and Jason has received them with hospitality. And all these [men] act in opposition to the decrees of Caesar, saying there is another king, Jesus.” Eph 1:18-23: It is according to the operation of the mightiness of his strength, with which he has operated in the case of the Christ when he raised him up from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above every government and authority and power and lordship and every name named, not only in this system of things, but also in that to come. He also subjected all things under his feet, and made himhead over all things to the congregation, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills up all things in all. Col 1: 12-14: … [The Father] delivered us from the authority of the darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, by means of whom we have our release by ransom, the forgiveness of our sins. 1 Pet 3:21, 22: [Baptism] is also now saving YOU, … (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the request made to God for a good conscience,) through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is at God’s right hand, for he went his way to heaven; and angels and authorities and powers were made subject to him. Viewed in their context, these passages all indicate that early Christians believed Jesus was ruling, not waiting. The entire basis of their confidence in salvation and forgiveness of sins was based on their understanding that they had a ruling high priest who could actively plead for them, that the glorified Jesus was in heaven, sitting at God’s right hand, that is, ruling with His Father’s full support, possessing complete authority to act on their behalf. Are We Living in a Special Time? Page 6 of 9 Are We Living in the “Last Days?” In addition to believing that Jesus was reigning, there is also no doubt that the first Christians believed they were living in the “last days.” Peter, on the occasion of the remarkable events of the first Pentecost after Jesus’ resurrection, quoted Joel’s prophecy as proof of that fact: “This is what was said through the prophet Joel, ‘“And in the last days,” God says, “I shall pour out some of my spirit upon every sort of flesh.” —Acts 2:16,17 The expression “last days” here translates the Greek term eschatais hemerais, an expression used in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures and widely understood by Jews to refer to the Messianic era. (Isa 2:2; Hosea 3:5; Micah 4:1) The introduction of the inspired letter to the Hebrews reflects this perspective: “God, who long ago spoke on many occasions and in many ways to our forefathers by means of the prophets, has at the end of these days spoken to us by means of a Son.” —Heb 1:1, 2 The expression “at the end of these days” in the New World Translation here translates the same Greek words used by Peter at Pentecost (eschatais hemerais: see Kingdom Interlinear), but the expression is translated differently here, so its implications are not immediately apparent to any but the most diligent student. Early Christians did not understand the expression “last days” in the same sense as we might say on a fine day just before we feel the first cool breezes of fall: “These are the last days of summer.” Many Jews believed that human history was divided into two great epochs: the “former days” or period before Messiah’s appearance, and the “latter days” or period after His appearance, that is the “Messianic era”. Since Jesus’ disciples accepted him as their Messiah, they believed that his appearance marked the beginning of the “last days,” in contrast with the “former days” before he appeared. This view was consistent with the Hebrew Scriptures. Many early Jewish Christians had to change their initial perspective on the nature of their Messiah and his rulership. They expected a political savior who would deliver them from subjection to Rome. Instead, Jesus delivered them from sin, death and the devil. His kingdom was quite real, but it was no part of this world. They became part of it by accepting and obeying him as ruler. (Col 1:13) Jesus also revealed to them that he would leave and return again, at an unexpected time. Many early disciples evidently thought the second coming would occur in their lifetime. But as more and more of those who had known Jesus personally, including the apostles, began to die (many as martyrs), and persecution against them intensified, they began to understand that the Messianic era was not to be a time of physical abundance and material blessing (as some Jewish rabbis taught), but would instead be an extended time of tribulation, especially for Christians. Thus, it was appropriate for Paul to warn Timothy: “Know this, that in the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here.” (2 Tim 3:1) After describing the kind of people that would typify these difficult days, he told Timothy to “turn away” (“be turning yourself away” Kingdom Interlinear) from these people. Clearly he was not warning Timothy to keep away from people who would live centuries in the future. He and Timothy were, in Paul’s view, living in the last days, that is, the Messianic or Christian era. Are We Living in a Special Time? Page 7 of 9 What about the “signs” which Jesus’ predicted? Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Jesus’ prophecy in Matthew 24 (and parallel passages in Mark 13 and Luke 21, sometimes called the “Olivet Discourse” or the “Eschatological Sermon,” from the Greek word for “final things”) describes a series of events which would happen at the time of Jesus’ parousia and serve as a sign that it had begun. The purpose of this document is not to present a detailed verse-by-verse consideration of these passages, but a few comments are appropriate. First, a brief explanation of the Watchtower understanding of the Greek word parousia in Matt. 24:3. The term is usually rendered “coming” or “arrival,” but is translated “presence” in the New World Translation. Late in the nineteenth century, some disappointed Second Adventists, disciples of William Miller, who had expected Jesus to return in 1843, noticed that parousia was translated “presence” in the Emphatic Diaglott, a Greek/English interlinear translation prepared by Benjamin Wilson. Apparently impressed by the chronology enough that they did not want to give up that date, some of them came up with the idea that perhaps Jesus’ second coming or advent really happened in 1843 just as Miller predicted, but invisibly. C. T. Russell was convinced that they were on to something and incorporated their ideas into his own interpretation of the “time of the end”. He saw Jesus’ parousia as a special 40-year period of invisible “presence” during which Russell’s followers, (then called International Bible Students; now Jehovah’s Witnesses) would be in a special relationship with him. Russell saw in the events described in Matt 24:3-14 proof that Jesus had already returned, invisibly. If Jesus’ parousia was actually to be of limited time and invisible, some “sign” might indeed be needed to show that it had begun, but it would be strange for Jesus to choose things which were to be in almost constant evidence during the entire Christian era as a “sign” of some special period at its end. Russell, in fact, pointed to the very same “signs” as proof that Jesus’ parousia started in 1874 that Witnesses point to today, events mentioned in Matthew 24:6-14 (war, pestilence, famine, earthquakes, and others) to prove that Jesus returned invisibly in 1914 and put them in charge of all his kingdom interests on earth. The word parousia, in its most common meaning, meant someone’s bodily presence, but it can also refer to the visit of a royal person, which is consistent with Jesus’ own description of his second coming: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” (Matt 25:31, 32) “The Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.”—1 Thess 4:16 In Jesus’ day, many Jews believed that immediately prior to Messiah’s coming there would be a series of calamities. These “woes of the Messiah,” included wars, insurrections, pestilence, famine, earthquakes, and signs or portents from heaven. It is not unlikely that Jesus’ disciples had heard of these predictions. So when they heard him predict the destruction of the temple, Are We Living in a Special Time? Page 8 of 9 they may have been asking, “Is this what we have been told to expect; the woes of the Messiah? Is the destruction of the temple part of that great time of calamity we expect to precede your coming in glory?” If that was the intent of their question, Jesus’ answer was that disasters would definitely come, but they would not be a sign of his return. Jesus started his prophecy by warning them not to be misled, adding that when wars and rumors of wars happened, “see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.” (Matt 24:6) Other catastrophes would also make their appearance. Even these would only be “the beginning of birth pains.” Rather than confirm that these things would be the immediate precursor to his return and their deliverance, Jesus warned them of increasing persecution and hatred by persons of all the nations, of a great rise in wickedness, and said that they would need endurance. His words did not point toward imminent deliverance, but an extended period of tribulation. The events Jesus mentioned in Matthew 24:3-14 have occurred often throughout the centuries since the days of the apostles. Periodically during those centuries, some Christians have tried to prove that Jesus’ return was imminent by pointing out the prevalence of war, earthquakes, famine, pestilence, and the like, and have been disappointed every single time. Indeed, Jesus’ words have been undergoing fulfillment for nearly two thousand years, and “the end is still to come.”5 Jesus’ words may have been the disciples’ first inkling that the Messianic era would not be the time of great political peace and material prosperity they may have been led to expect by some Jewish teachers. Since evidently they associated the destruction he spoke of with his return, they only asked one question, but Jesus reply encompassed two separate events: first, the destruction of the Jewish temple and second, Jesus’ return or parousia, both of which they may have thought would occur at the same time. Jesus gave them specific instructions about what to do at the time of Jerusalem’s destruction. But at the same time, he warned them that events they might have considered to be “signs” of his parousia were not true signs at all, but false signs, expected by some Jews in connection with the glorious arrival of Messiah, but not relevant to Jesus’ second coming. It is very significant that, rather than giving them a sign which would appear some significant period of time, even years, in advance of his second coming, he instead repeatedly urged them to keep alert, on the watch. He compared his return to the visit of a thief in the night. Thieves do not provide any advance notice before they strike. —Matt 24:43, 44 Conclusion To summarize, there are serious problems with the Watchtower view. First, the idea that anyone can predict by any means when Christ would return is in direct contradiction to Jesus own clearly stated warning that he would return in glory at a time that his disciples did not think it to be. The idea of any kind of sign which would give advance warning of Jesus’ second advent completely contradicts what He clearly said on numerous occasions, that his arrival would be both sudden and unexpected: “Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come.” (Mark 13:33) If we take him at his word, Jesus’ words on the Mount of Olives do not provide a way to predict either an invisible presence or his imminent second coming. Second, the concept of Jesus’ parousia as an invisible event cannot be reconciled with His words: “Look! I am with you always, until the conclusion of the system of things” (Matt 28:19) which clearly show that Jesus would always be invisibly present with his disciples. It also directly contradicts Rev 1:7, which says “Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him,” which clearly states that Jesus’ arrival in glory would be anything but invisible. Third, if we remain true to the original and most direct sense of Scripture, we must conclude that Jesus began ruling in the first century, and that all Christians who lived from the first century until now have been living in the last days ( the Messianic era). Both biblical and historical evidence show that Jesus Christ began to reign in the first century, and that his reign has continued until now, “in the midst of his enemies.” That being so, we must also conclude that the situation that has existed among persons claiming to be Christians is what Jesus expected, and that the way things have developed is in harmony with his sovereign will as king over heaven and earth. Any group which started during the centuries following the apostolic age, then, can make no serious claim to being Jesus’ true church. We have absolutely no reason to conclude that Jesus abandoned his followers to his enemy the devil at the end of the apostolic period, as Russell believed and taught. Nor is there any basis to conclude that near the end of the first century, things somehow got out of Jesus’ control and the whole body of Christ became corrupt and worthless. We must conclude that there have been true followers of Christ all down through the centuries since Jesus walked the earth, and that during the entire Christian era, Christ’s followers would face the same types of difficulties. Each would be required to be faithful and obedient to his Lord in the situation in which each found himself or herself. Second, the concept of Jesus’ parousia as an invisible event cannot be reconciled with His words: “Look! I am with you always, until the conclusion of the system of things” (Matt 28:19 ) which clearly show that Jesus would always be invisibly present with his disciples. It also directly contradicts Rev 1:7, which says “Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him,” which clearly states that Jesus’ parousia would be anything but invisible. Thirdly, if we remain true to the original and most direct sense of Scripture, we must conclude that Jesus began ruling in the first century, and that all Christians who lived from the first century until now have been living in the last days ( the Messianic era). Both biblical and historical evidence show that Jesus Christ began to reign in the first century, and that his reign has continued until now, “in the midst of his enemies.” That being so, we must also conclude that the situation that has existed among persons claiming to be Christians is what Jesus expected, and that the way things have developed is in harmony with his sovereign will as king over heaven and earth. Any group which started during the centuries following the apostolic age, then, can make no serious claim to being Jesus’ true church. We have absolutely no reason to conclude that Jesus abandoned his followers to his enemy the devil at the end of the apostolic period, as Russell believed and taught. There is also no basis to conclude that near the end of the first century, things somehow got out of Jesus’ control and the whole body of Christ became corrupt and worthless. We must conclude that there have been true followers of Christ all down through the centuries since Jesus walked the earth, and that Christians, during the entire Christian era, would face the same types of difficulties. Each would be required to be faithful and obedient to his Lord in the situation in which each found himself or herself.
There has been a surge in interest in topics such as Bible prophecy and the Rapture in the last few years, largely due to the surprising success of the Left Behind series written by two devout Protestants. This article seeks to outline Catholic beliefs about the “last days,” relying on Scripture and the Catechism of the Catholic Church and to compare those teachings with the belief in the Rapture as it is found in the Left Behind books and similar works. Have you ever had non-Catholic friends ask questions such as, “Do Catholics believe in the Rapture?” and “Why doesn’t the Catholic Church interpret the book of Revelation literally?”?
Perhaps you or someone you know has read the best-selling Left Behind books and wants to know if they are “biblically sound.” Maybe you saw a televangelist explaining that Christ will come soon to Rapture Christians from earth, but you’ve never heard your priest talk about it. There has been a surge in interest in topics such as Bible prophecy and the Rapture in the last few years, largely due to the surprising success of the Left Behind series, coauthored by Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, two Fundamentalist Protestant authors.
1 Many Catholics have read the books, and while some recognize that the books do not completely agree with Catholic doctrine, others assume they are compatible. Aren’t the authors devout Christians trying to spread the Gospel?
2 Given this situation, this article seeks to do two things. First, outline Catholic beliefs about the “last days,” relying on Scripture and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Second, compare those teachings with the belief in the Rapture as it is found in the Left Behind books and similar works. Are we living in the “last days”? Are we, as many Christians believe, living in the last days? In fact, the “last days” refers not only to the “end of time,” but to the last two thousand years. Scripture teaches that the Incarnation ushered in “the last days.”
According to Hebrews 1:1-2, “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.” At Pentecost, Peter preached that “the last days” had arrived, in fulfillment of the words of the prophet Joel: “For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only the third hour of the day; but this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel: ‘And it shall be in the last days,’ God says, that I will pour forth my spirit on all mankind . . .” (Acts 2:15-17; cf. Joel 2:28-32). “The last days” or “the end times,” properly understood, refers to the time of the New Covenant, the gathering together of God’s people in the Church, which is “on earth, the seed and the beginning of the kingdom” (CCC 567, 669; Lumen Gentium) .
The Holy Spirit, the “soul of the Church,” has been and is being poured out, because of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ: The Holy Spirit is at work with the Father and the Son from the beginning to the completion of the plan for our salvation. But in these “end times,” ushered in by the Son’s redeeming Incarnation, the Spirit is revealed and given, recognized and welcomed as a person. Now can this divine plan, accomplished in Christ, the firstborn and head of the new creation, be embodied in mankind by the outpouring of the Spirit: as the Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting (CCC 686).
This understanding of the “last days” differs from that of those who believe in the Rapture. Catholics agree that there will definitely be an “end of time” and that history as we know it will one day be complete. But we also recognize that each of us will face the end of our time on earth, and that this should, in many ways, concern us more than the end of the world (see CCC 1007). Church authority and Bible prophecy How should we understand the Bible’s teaching on the “last days”? For Catholics, the Bible is truly the Word of God, and when the Word of God says that the Church is the Body of Christ (Ephesians 1:22-23; 5:22-33) and the “pillar and support of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15), it points to a key principle: the task of authentically interpreting Scripture belongs to the Church. And the Church has a certain structure, based on Christ’s own choosing of apostles and granting them authority: “For, of course, all that has been said about the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgment of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God (CCC 119). This does not mean that the Catholic Church has definitively interpreted every single passage of Scripture or that individual Catholics cannot study Scripture for themselves.
On the contrary, the Church has definitively interpreted less than a dozen passages, while encouraging Catholics to read the Bible in light of the “living Tradition of the whole Church” (CCC 113). The issue of authority in interpreting Scripture is important because so much of what passes for “Biblical prophecy” today is really pseudo-Biblical guesswork, noteworthy for its use of sloppy methods, hazy conjecture, and overt sensationalism. Many “prophecy teachers,” especially in the last three decades, have taken passages of Scripture and applied them to current events and people with little or no regard for historical context or original meaning of the texts. This has resulted, for example, in the Antichrist being identified as the Pope, Hitler, Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, Saddam Hussein, and other, lesser-known people. The puzzling and sometimes shocking images of Revelation are interpreted in clever, bizarre, and often laughable ways. The mark of the beast (Rev. 13:16-18) is seen in bar codes, credit cards, computer chips and laser beams. Most Catholics who encounter such misinterpretations usually scratch their heads and steer clear of the biblical books that deal with apocalyptic themes, Daniel and Revelation. They are content to let their non-Catholic friends battle over these confusing matters. This is unfortunate for a couple of reasons.
First, Catholics should study all of Scripture, including difficult books such as Daniel and Revelation, because God gave it to the Church for that purpose.
Second, the Catholic Church offers two thousand years of reflection and study of Scripture, resulting in a rich, balanced, and nuanced understanding of the whole Bible. If the Catholic Church has the authority that Catholics believe she possesses, then they need to take seriously her understanding of Scripture. At the very least, doing so will help them avoid the serious misunderstandings of some other Christians and will equip Catholics to discuss these misunderstandings with them.
Defining some terms The Left Behind books are based on a theological system known as dispensationalism. This term refers to the belief that God works in history through a series of different epochs, or dispensations. In each of these periods, God tests man in a certain way. Man fails the test, and then God judges man. On this view, man now lives during the “Church Age,” which is so full of apostasy and error that only a remnant of “true believers” remains.
According to dispensationalism, God is pursuing two purposes in history: one involving an earthly people (Israel) and the other, a heavenly people (the Church).
3 Dispensationalists believe that when Jesus Christ came, He offered the earthly people, Israel, a physical, earthly kingdom, but that they rejected Him as their Messiah. Consequently, Jesus formed a heavenly people, the Church, who are not meant to reign here on earth, but will reign with Him in heaven. However, God will still fulfill the many Old Testament promises to Israel, His earthly people, because, dispensationalists insist, those promises were unconditional. When Christ founded the Church, all of those promises were “put on hold” until the heavenly people were removed from the earth in the Rapture. Since Israel has now been reestablished as a nation, most dispensationalists believe that the removal of the Church via the Rapture can occur at any moment. The Rapture will be a secret “snatching up” of all true believers in Christ to heaven; it will be immediately followed according to most dispensationalists by seven years of Tribulation and the reign of the Antichrist. At the end of the Tribulation, Christ will come again to establish an earthly, thousand-year reign, based in Jerusalem, where a new temple (complete with animal sacrifices) will exist.
4 The dispensationalist view of the end times was developed in the 1830s by an ex-Anglican priest named John Nelson Darby, who condemned most of Christendom as apostate and worldly. Dispensationalism subsequently spread throughout the U.S., in the early 1900s, as a result of the popular Scofield Reference Bible, which incorporated dispensationalist ideas into its footnotes. In the 1970s, the doctrine was popularized through the best-selling books such as The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey.
5 Some Catholics might dismiss these unusual beliefs as unimportant. But that would be a mistake for a number of reasons. For one thing, despite waning popularity in scholarly theological circles, dispensationalism is still a widespread belief system among Fundamentalists and many Evangelicals, even many of those who are unfamiliar with the term. Another reason is that the vast majority of dispensationalists are either actively opposed to, or are very suspicious of, the Catholic Church. Many of them believe the Catholic Church will play a central role in a coming one world apostate religion. In a sense, this shouldn’t surprise anyone, since the core of dispensationalism is incompatible with Catholic doctrine, even though they are compatible on some secondary issues. Moreover, many Catholics who leave the Church are drawn towards groups that teach dispensationalism in some form or another. The belief in the Rapture is often what attracts these straying Catholics. Finally, through Fundamentalist and conservative Evangelical political activity, dispensationalist ideas and interests have had a significant influence on U.S. foreign policy towards Israel and the Middle East, and on how many of these Christians view the U.S. Many Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians are staunch allies of Israel for theological, rather than political reasons. Two people of God, or just one? Eschatology, the study of the last things, flows directly from ecclesiology, the doctrine of the Church. This explains some of the significant differences between what Catholics and many Fundamentalists believe about the end of time. While Tim Lahaye, Hal Lindsey, and other dispensationalists teach that God has two people, the Church and Israel, the Catholic Church asserts that God has always had only one people, or family, throughout history. According to Catechism, “This ‘family of God’ is gradually formed and takes shape during the stages of human history, in keeping with the Father’s plan. In fact, ‘already present in figure at the beginning of the world, this Church was prepared in marvelous fashion in the history of the people of Israel . . . . Established in this last age of the world and made manifest in the outpouring of the Spirit, it will be brought to glorious completion at the end of time’” (CCC 759). Therefore, the Catholic Church has always understood herself as being the New Israel (Gal. 6:16; Eph. 2:11-12) and the new People of God (1 Pet. 2:9-10), the recipients of the New Covenant given through Christ (Heb. 8:8-13). The Old Covenant was not rejected by Christ, but fulfilled and taken up into the New Covenant; it concluded with the New Covenant and is included in it. This difference between dispensationalism and Catholic doctrine is the basis for other disagreements, including those involving the Rapture and the nature of the millennium. (Interestingly enough, even Luther and Calvin understood the Church to be the true heir of Israel. They also would have rejected dispensationalism, which only emerged as a method of biblical interpretation in the last two hundred years or so.) Catholic doctrine also teaches that the Church is intimately related to the Kingdom of God. The Church is “ultimately one, holy, catholic, and apostolic in her deepest and ultimate identity, because it is in her that ‘the Kingdom of heaven,’ the ‘Reign of God,’ already exists and will be fulfilled at the end of time” (CCC 865). The Kingdom is not yet complete, but began with the Incarnation and will be fully realized at the end of time: “The kingdom of heaven was inaugurated on earth by Christ. ‘This kingdom shone out before men in the word, in the works and in the presence of Christ.’ The Church is the seed and beginning of this kingdom. Its keys are entrusted to Peter” (CCC 567). In its fullness, the Kingdom is not an earthly reign, but the final triumph of Christ over the power of sin and Satan, culminating in an eternity spent in communion with the Triune God: “The kingdom has come in the person of Christ and grows mysteriously in the hearts of those incorporated into him, until its full eschatological manifestation” (CCC 865). In contrast, dispensationalists believe that the Kingdom will be a thousand-year, earthly reign of Christ, known as the Millennium (from the Latin word for “thousand years”). Belief in a literal thousand-year earthly reign is called millenarianism or millennialism. It has been explicitly rejected by the Catholic Church. In 1944, the Holy Office warned against “. . . the system of mitigated Millenarianism, which teaches . . . that Christ the Lord before the final judgment, whether or not preceded by the resurrection of the many just, will come visibly to rule over this world. . . . The system of mitigated Millenarianism cannot be taught safely” (CCC 676). It is true that some of the early Church Fathers before the fourth century believed in an earthly, millennial reign of Christ. This belief was largely formed in reaction to Gnostics, who taught that Christ and His Kingdom had nothing to do with the physical world since, the Gnostics claimed, it was inherently evil. However, St. Augustine, writing in the late 300s and early 400s, interpreted the reference to a “thousand years” in Revelation 20 as a metaphor for the age of the Church. This would become the accepted belief of the Church, going unchallenged for many centuries. Yet the Catholic Church has never made a formal statement about what the Millennium is, although Augustine’s view has usually been accepted by Catholic theologians.
6 In addition, none of the Church Fathers believed in a secret removal of true believers prior to the Tribulation. On the contrary, they taught that the Church would undergo a period of intense tribulation prior to the Second Coming. The idea of a “secret” Rapture, developed by John Nelson Darby in the 1830s, would have been both foreign and repulsive to the early Christians, as it was bothersome to many of Darby’s Protestant allies.
7 The rapture and the second coming The Church tacitly rejects the “secret” Rapture based on her doctrine of the Church. It has always been Catholic teaching, of course, that Jesus Christ will physically and visibly return to earth. As we say in the Creed each week at Eucharistic Liturgy, “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end” (cf. CCC 681-682). Yet from the Catholic perspective, the term rapture is problematic. On one hand, it can refer to being taken to be with Christ (1 Thess. 4:17; see CCC 1025). In fact, the term rapture comes from Jerome’s Latin translation of 1 Thes 4:17, meaning “to be caught up.” Catholics believe this will happen at the Second Coming, when our bodies are resurrected (see CCC 989-990).
On the other hand, the term “Rapture” is, in a sense, owned and copyrighted by dispensationalists. In popular discourse, it almost always refers to a secret snatching away of “true believers,” prior to the Tribulation, and distinct from the Second Coming. Since the term Rapture is rarely used in Catholic circles, it is easy to see how confusion among Catholics might arise. But in any case the Rapture, as dispensationalists use the term, is contrary to Catholic belief. Israel, tribulation, and Antichrist Another issue is the fate of Israel. What will happen to Israel in the end? According to the Catechism, “The glorious Messiah’s coming is suspended at every moment of history until His recognition by ‘all Israel’, for ‘a hardening has come upon part of Israel’ in their ‘unbelief’ toward Jesus” (CCC 674). The Church, reflecting upon Romans 9- 11, believes that Israel will somehow come to recognize Christ for who He is. Precisely how this will occur the Church has not said. The Church also says relatively little about the time of trial or tribulation in the final days. The Church will go through the great trial, but we do not know how long it will last. The Catechism declares, “Before Christ’s Second Coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth” (CCC 675; also see CCC 2642). This time of trial will be at the start of the “last days” in the sense of the end of history: “According to the Lord, the present time is the time of the Spirit and of witness, but also a time still marked by ‘distress’ and the time of evil which does not spare the Church and ushers in the struggles of the last days. It is a time of waiting and watching” (CCC 672). Along with this belief in a time of future testing and trial, the Church teaches that there have been many Antichrists, but there will also be the Antichrist who leads a worldwide system of anti-Christian belief: . . . The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh. . . . The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the [end times] judgment. . . . (CCC 675, 676) This last sentence applies to any sort of utopian scheme that ignores man’s fallen nature, the reality of sin, and man’s need for salvation through Christ.
Interpreting the book of Revelation Interpretations of the book of Revelation are, undoubtedly, among the most hotly debated aspects of the Bible. The Catholic Church has not officially interpreted the difficult passages in Revelation. But various Catholic scholars have commented on them, and have debated the various interpretations.
8 There are four main approaches to the book of Revelation: futurist, preterist, historicist and idealist.
Futurists believe that most or all of the book of Revelation has yet to be fulfilled;
preterists say that most or all of it was fulfilled in the first century;
historicists claim that events described in Revelation have been transpiring for the last two thousand years;
and idealists believe that the book of Revelation is allegorical and has little or nothing to do with historical events.
9 The Catholic Church allows a wide range of interpretive possibilities, including forms of futurism, preterism, historicism and idealism. For example, a Catholic may believe the book of Revelation describes the conflict of good and evil as experienced by individual Christians or the Church (idealism), and makes prophetic utterances about events still to occur (futurism), and also refers to events that have already occurred, either in the early Church or later Church history (preterism and historicism). Catholic flexibility here is based on the fact that Scripture, inspired by God, often has different, yet complementary, meanings. From early times, the Church, following the examples of Christ and the Apostles (i.e., Lk 24:25-27; 1 Cor 10:1-4), understood Scripture to have different senses, a literal and a spiritual sense (CCC 115).
As the Catechism explains, the spiritual sense is always rooted in the literal sense: “The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: ‘All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal’” (CCC 116). A common misconception is that Catholics interpret Scripture especially the book of Revelation “symbolically,” while Evangelicals interpret it “literally.” This has often been used to explain why the Catholic Church rejects an earthly, thousand-year reign of Christ. Yet few “literalists” bother to interpret literally other images in Revelation, such as the Beast, the dragon, the locusts, and the four horsemen.
A last word on the last days
In conclusion, it can be seen that the Catholic Church says relatively little about future events leading up to Christ’s Second Coming. Many of her teachings are rejections (either implicit or explicit), not affirmations, of particular beliefs such as the dispensational dichotomy between the Church and Israel, the “secret” Rapture, and the earthly millennial kingdom. What she does teach is quite clear, as well as succinct: there will be a Second Coming, a time of trial which the Church must endure, an Antichrist, a conversion of Israel to Christ, a definitive judgment of all people, and the fulfillment of the Kingdom that has already begun in the Church. Within those parameters, Catholics may freely roam, search the Scriptures, and seek to better understand the Word of God.
Endnotes
The first book of the series, Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days, was published in 1995. Seven books have followed, with the last two, The Indwelling and The Mark, reaching the top of numerous bestsellers lists, including the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal. The series has now sold over 30 million copies.
Some Catholics with whom I have corresponded have taken this attitude. One Catholic suggested that we focus on the positive things in the Left Behind series and how to use them to evangelize. This correspondent described it as “paranoid” to try to find anti-Catholicism in the books.
Charles C. Ryrie, a leading dispensationalist of the last forty years, writes, “A dispensationalist keeps Israel and the Church distinct” (Dispensationalism Today[Chicago: Moody Press, 1965], 44). He quotes Lewis S. Chafer, another leading dispensational theologian: “The dispensationalist believes that throughout the ages God is pursuing two distinct purposes: one related to the earth with earthly people and earthly objectives involved which is Judaism; while the other is related to heaven with heavenly people and heavenly objectives involved, which is Christianity” (Dispensationalism Today, 45).
This belief is held by almost all dispensationalists and is based on their interpretations of Old Testament prophecies. In his commentary Revelation Unveiled(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1999), Lahaye explains that the prophet Ezekiel “goes into great detail regarding the matter of worshipping in the Temple, even pointing out that the sacrificial systems will be reestablished. These sacrifices during the millennial Kingdom will be to the nation of Israel what the Lord’s Supper is to the Church today: a reminder of what they have been saved from. No meritorious or efficacious work will be accomplished through these sacrifices. Instead, they will remind Israel repeatedly of their crucified Messiah . . .” (Revelation Unveiled, 341). What Lahaye fails to mention is that Ezekiel never states that the sacrifices will merely be reminders this is a completely unwarranted conclusion and is inconsistent with Lahaye’s supposed “literal” interpretation of Scripture.
Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth was the best-selling book of the 1970s, according to the New York Times. Translated into over fifty languages, it has sales of thirty-five million copies. Lindsey has authored close to twenty books and still maintains a high profile in the world of “Bible prophecy.”
In writing about St. Augustine’s view of the millennium, Fr. Vincent P. Miceli, S.J. states that “The real meaning of the thousand years is that the saints are reigning at the present time with Christ in His kingdom the Church. For the Church is now, today, His kingdom” (The Antichrist [Harrison, NY: Roman Catholic Books, 1981], 74).
A minority today among Fundamentalists and Evangelicals, historical premillennialists who do not agree with the dispensational distinction between Israel and the Church, but do believe there will be a literal, one thousand-year reign of Christ on earth.
Highly recommended is the Navarre commentary, Revelation: Texts and Commentaries (Four Courts Press, 1992). Another solid Catholic commentary still in print is Dominican H. M. Feret’s The Apocalypse Explained (Fort Collins, CO: Roman Catholic Books, 1958). An excellent, detailed, and scholarly commentary, written by Presbyterian theologian David Chilton, is The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Fort Worth, TX: Dominion Press, 1987). Chilton also wrote a shorter, more popular commentary, The Great Tribulation (Fort Worth, TX: Dominion Press, 1987).
A helpful volume is Revelation: Four Views (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1997), a parallel commentary edited by Steve Gregg, an Evangelical teacher. A related work is The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1977), edited by Robert G. Clouse.
“We’re living in the fulfilment of the Book of Revelation…” Fr. Joseph Iannuzzi explains.
Anti-Christ: Who is He? Explaining the Faith with Fr. Chris Alar
SECOND PENTOCOST = CHRIST’S SECOND COMING = EUCHARISTIC REIGN OF CHRIST = TRIUMPH OF IMMACULATE HEART = ERA OF PEACE = WILL DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN = FULFILLMENT OF DIVINE WILL
EUCHARISTIC REIGN = INTERIOR REALITY WHERE WE BECOME LIVING HOSTS
REAL LIFE OR REAL PRESENCE PERPETUATED 24/7
MINUTE 1H12′
2ND PENTECOST
MINUTE 1H15′
Jesus coming to wed the church when she is pure and then it is the end of times
SORROW IN HEAVEN BUT NO PHYSICAL PAIN – SOULS MARTYRED WAITING FOR VINDICATION
THE WEDDING OF THE LAMB: What Really Happened at Cana and Why It Matters: Explaining the Faith with Fr. Chris Alar
“Things will be so bad you won’t be able to go to Church…” Fr. Joseph Iannuzzi explains.
End times – starting at minute 12’13
THE BEASTS OF THE REVELATION: COMMUNISM AND FREEMASONRY
Why a ‘New Earth’ If We’re All Supposed to Be in Heaven?
“The Solemnity of All Saints is celebrated on November 1. It is a solemnity, a holyday of obligation and the day that the Church honors all of God’s saints, even those who have not been canonized by the Church. It is a family day of celebration—we celebrate the memory of those family members (sharing with us in the Mystical Body, the doctrine of the Communion of Saints) now sharing eternal happiness in the presence of God. We rejoice that they have reached their eternal goal and ask their prayers on our behalf so that we, too, may join them in heaven and praise God through all eternity. The honoring of all Christian martyrs of the Faith was originally celebrated on May 13, the date established by the fourth century. Pope Boniface IV in 615 established it as the “Feast of All Martyrs” commemorating the dedication of the Pantheon, an ancient Roman temple, into a Christian church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the martyrs. By 741, the feast included not only martyrs, but all the saints in heaven as well, with the title changing to “Feast of All Saints” by 840. In 844, Pope Gregory IV transferred the feast to November 1st, timing it around the harvests to be able to provide food for the pilgrims. Some scholars believe this was to substitute a feast for the pagan celebrations during that time of year. Pope Sixtus IV in 1484 established November 1 as a holyday of obligation and gave it both a vigil (known today as “All Hallows’ Eve” or “Hallowe’en”) and an eight-day period or octave to celebrate the feast. This feast is marked with liturgical observances that have changed over the centuries. By 1955, the octave and vigil of All Saints were abrogated. Instead of a separate vigil on the calendar, the celebration begins the evening before, as mentioned in The General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar“”
ABSOLUTE MUST SEE: What Do Catholics Believe About Christmas? Part 1
What Do Catholics Believe About Christmas? | Part 2
Dr. Michael Barber on The True Meaning of Christmas | The Augustine Institute Show with Dr. Tim Gray
OUTRIGHT LIES ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTIAN FEASTS IN ALL LITERATURE AND EVEN OFFICIAL WEBSITES
PURAS MENTIRAS EN CUANTO A LOS ORIGENES DE LAS FIESTAS EN LA LITERATURA Y AUN EN SITIOS OFICIALES
EXAMPLE / EJEMPLO: La galette des rois, une tradition bien française
“Comme beaucoup de fêtes chrétiennes, la date de l’Epiphanie correspond, à l’origine, à une fête païenne. Car autrefois, les Romains fêtaient les Saturnales, fêtes du solstice d’hiver, qui consistaient à désigner le roi ou la reine d’un jour, au moyen d’une fève blanche ou noire cachée dans une galette. “
NOTE THAT THE SATURNALES WERE ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT DATE: La célébration des Saturnales a lieu dans le cadre des «saturnales» qui, du 17 au 23 décembre, commémorent le règne paradisiaque de Saturne, où les hommes vivaient dans l’égalité et l’abondance, sans avoir à travailler la terre.
La primera imagen de la natividad. Siglo III. Catacumbas de Priscila. Roma.
Aquí tienes la representación más antigua de *la Natividad*, de *principios del s. III*. Como no, en Roma, *en las catacumbas de Priscila,* así llamadas por la propietaria del terreno, *la noble Priscila*. En la Via Saleria, alejadas, pues, de las famosas catacumbas de la Via Apia. Se dice que el personaje a la izquierda sea el profeta *Balaam* (Nú. 24,17). *Yo no veo ninguna dificultad en aceptar que se trate de San José*. Señala hacia la estrella de la que nos habla Mateo (y sólo Mateo) en su Evangelio, *representada aquí con 12 puntas*. En las mismas catacumbas se halla también la representación más antigua de *los Reyes Magos*, en número de tres, como se los imagina hoy (aunque Mateo, único que los menciona, no nos diga su número).
Everybody knows that Christmas is really just a warmed-over Celebration of the Feast of the Sol Invictus by Mark Shea Guess what? Everybody’s wrong! Another little excerpt from my book(s?) on Mary, Behold Your Mother (sans footnotes, but trust me, the citations are all in order): Pseudo-Knowledge and “Pagan Christmas” Time was when I, like most people, took it for granted the winter solstice and, in particular, the Roman Feast of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun were simply pagan celebrations that hung around into Christian times. In fact, when I set out to write this book I still thought this. But I discovered the reality is far more complicated and interesting. Indeed, it turns out this widely assumed “fact” that “everybody knows” is probably another sample of pseudo-knowledge. For according to William Tighe, a church history specialist at Pennsylvania’s Muhlenberg College, “the pagan festival of the ‘Birth of the Unconquered Sun’ instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Thus the ‘pagan origins of Christmas’ is a myth without historical substance.” For the fact is, our records of a tradition associating Jesus’ birth with December 25 are decades older than any records concerning a pagan feast on that day. [T]he definitive Handbook of Biblical Chronology by professor Jack Finegan (Hendrickson, 1998 revised edition) cites an important reference in the Chronicle written by Hippolytus of Rome three decades before Aurelian launched his festival. Hippolytus said Jesus’ birth “took place eight days before the kalends of January,” that is, Dec. 25. Tighe said there’s evidence that as early as the second and third centuries, Christians sought to fix the birth date to help determine the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection for the liturgical calendar—long before Christmas also became a festival. To make a long and complicated story short, there was agitation in the early Church concerning, not Jesus’ birthday, but the day upon which the historical Good Friday and Easter fell. It finally ended up that, in the Eastern Church, the tradition focused on April 6 as the date for the original Good Friday, while in the Western Church it was widely held that the date was March 25. Why does this matter? Tighe continues: At this point, we have to introduce a belief that seems to have been widespread in Judaism at the time of Christ, but which, as it is nowhere taught in the Bible, has completely fallen from the awareness of Christians. The idea is that of the “integral age” of the great Jewish prophets: the idea that the prophets of Israel died on the same dates as their birth or conception. This notion is a key factor in understanding how some early Christians came to believe that December 25th is the date of Christ’s birth. The early Christians applied this idea to Jesus, so that March 25th and April 6th were not only the supposed dates of Christ’s death, but of his conception or birth as well. There is some fleeting evidence that at least some first- and second-century Christians thought of March 25th or April 6th as the date of Christ’s birth, but rather quickly the assignment of March 25th as the date of Christ’s conception prevailed. It is to this day commemorated almost universally among Christians as the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel brought the good tidings of a savior to the Virgin Mary, upon whose acquiescence the Eternal Word of God (“Light of Light, True God of True God, begotten of the Father before all ages”) forthwith became incarnate in her womb. What is the length of pregnancy? Nine months. Add nine months to March 25th and you get December 25th; add it to April 6th and you get January 6th. December 25th is Christmas, and January 6th is Epiphany. And because these traditional, albeit competing, birth dates were already being revered in the rapidly growing Church, the emperor of a failing pagan empire instituted the Feast of the Unconquered Sun not only as an “effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certainly [as] an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians.” In addition to this there’s another small, but telling, point. We also find St. John Chrysostom (a patriarch of Constantinople who died in 407 A.D.) noted that Christians had celebrated December 25 from the Church’s early days. Chrysostom reinforced his point with an argument that used Scripture, not pagan mythology, for corroboration: Luke 1 says Zechariah was performing priestly duty in the Temple when an angel told his wife Elizabeth she would bear John the Baptist. During the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, Mary learned about her conception of Jesus and visited Elizabeth “with haste.” The 24 classes of Jewish priests served one week in the Temple, and Zechariah was in the eighth class. Rabbinical tradition fixed the class on duty when the Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70 and, calculating backward from that, Zechariah’s class would have been serving Oct. 2-9 in 5 B.C. So Mary’s conception visit six months later might have occurred the following March and Jesus’ birth nine months afterward. So how did it become “common knowledge” that Christmas is really just a warmed-over pagan festival? It happened through a series of ironies capped by yet another example of pseudo-knowledge. The first irony is the reaction of the Christians of the late Roman Empire to Aurelian’s attempt to co-opt Christmas and make it a pagan day of celebration. Instead of fighting with Sun-worshipers who were trying to rip off their feast, early Christians simply “re-appropriate[d] the pagan ‘Birth of the Unconquered Sun’ to refer, on the occasion of the birth of Christ, to the rising of the ‘Sun of Salvation’ or the ‘Sun of Justice.’” Mark that, because we shall return to it. The next irony happens in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the myth of “pagan Christmas” really took hold.
Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th was one of the many “paganizations” of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many “degenerations” that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes without paganizing the Gospel. In the Julian calendar, created in 45 B.C. under Julius Caesar, the winter solstice fell on December 25th, and it therefore seemed obvious to Jablonski and Hardouin that the day must have had a pagan significance before it had a Christian one. Note that: Jablonski began, not with evidence, but with an assumption that the winter solstice must have had a pagan significance before it had a Christian one. In other words, Jablonski simply noticed a correspondence between the Julian calendar’s solstice and Christmas and assumed the pagan feast must have been the prior one even though he had no proof for his theory. Meanwhile, Hardouin, rather than challenge that assumption, simply went along with it. And it’s upon these two authors that the entire myth about Christmas being a warmed-over pagan Sun-worshiping feast is based. But in fact, the date [December 25] had no religious significance in the Roman pagan festal calendar before Aurelian’s time, nor did the cult of the sun play a prominent role in Rome before him. There were two temples of the sun in Rome, one of which (maintained by the clan into which Aurelian was born or adopted) celebrated its dedication festival on August 9th, the other of which celebrated its dedication festival on August 28th. But both of these cults fell into neglect in the second century, when eastern cults of the sun, such as Mithraism, began to win a following in Rome. And in any case, none of these cults, old or new, had festivals associated with solstices or equinoxes. What Can We Learn From This? It is vital we not get bogged down in minutiae and miss the blazingly obvious. So, for instance, we must not get distracted by the irrelevant question of whether Roman Christians were right to place Jesus’ birthday on December 25. Nor should we waste time saying, “Ah ha! Some early Christians relied on the unbiblical Jewish tradition of ‘integral age’ or Chrysostom’s ‘rabbinic tradition’!” Again, granted: the date of Christmas isn’t found in Scripture. But that isn’t what matters. The crucial thing is not, “Did the early Christians get the date of Christmas right?” It is, rather, “What mattered to them as they determined the date of Christmas?” And when you look at that, you again immediately realize that what dominates their minds is not Diana, Isis, sun worship, or anything else in the pagan religious world. What interests them is, from our modern multicultural perspective, stunningly insular. Their debates are consumed, not by longing for goddess worship, or pagan mythology, or a desire to import Isis and Diana into the Faith, but the exact details of the New Testament record of Jesus’ death, alloyed with a Jewish—-not pagan—-theory about when Jewish—-not pagan—-prophets die. They don’t care a bit how pagan priests ordered their worship in the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. They care intensely about how Levitical priests ordered their worship in the Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem. These Christians are completely riveted on Scripture and details of Jewish and Christian history and tradition. They don’t give a hoot what sun worshipers, Osiris devotees, or Isis fans might think. A Common Objection At this point some people object, “But you yourself acknowledge the early Christians ‘re-appropriated the pagan “Birth of the Unconquered Sun”’ to refer to the birth of Christ”. True. That is, I’m willing to grant that when Aurelian tried to co-opt a Christian holy day by designating it as the date for a pagan festival, Christians checkmated Aurelius by refusing to allow him to claim a sort of copyright on the Sun for paganism. Instead, they insisted on returning the Sun to the service of God its Creator—Whom Scripture calls the True Light of the World and a Sun and a Shield—and did not make the blunder of worshiping the creature. They behaved rather like modern Christians who offer punning riffs on current cultural phenomena (“Jesus: He’s the Real Thing” “Christ: Don’t Leave Earth Without Him,” etc.). Exactly what they did not do is take passages of Scripture which referred to Jesus and apply them to Apollo or some other pagan deity. Nor did they look to Apollo or some other pagan deity to tell them about Jesus; they knew perfectly well Jesus could be represented as the Sun of Justice and Light of the World long before Aurelius invented his pagan festival. That’s because early Christians were behaving in a way perfectly consistent with Scripture, becoming “all things to all men” (1 Corinthians 9:22), not “holding the form of religion while denying the power of it” (2 Timothy 3:5). This matters immensely because it bears directly on the first moment when the early Catholic Church really did borrow something from pagans. And not just any pagans, mind you, but actual adherents of Babylonian Mystery Religion. And most amazingly, the early Catholics’ decision to do so receives the complete approval of, and even hearty defense by… Evangelicals.
HOW DECEMBER 25th BECAME CHRISTMAS
by Andrew McGowan
On December 25, Christians around the world will gather to celebrate Jesus’ birth. Joyful carols, special liturgies, brightly wrapped gifts, festive foods—these all characterize the feast today, at least in the northern hemisphere. But just how did the Christmas festival originate? How did December 25 come to be associated with Jesus’ birthday? The Bible offers few clues: Celebrations of Jesus’ Nativity are not mentioned in the Gospels or Acts; the date is not given, not even the time of year. The biblical reference to shepherds tending their flocks at night when they hear the news of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:8) might suggest the spring lambing season; in the cold month of December, on the other hand, sheep might well have been corralled. Yet most scholars would urge caution about extracting such a precise but incidental detail from a narrative whose focus is theological rather than calendrical. The extrabiblical evidence from the first and second century is equally spare: There is no mention of birth celebrations in the writings of early Christian writers such as Irenaeus (c. 130–200) or Tertullian (c. 160–225). Origen of Alexandria (c. 165–264) goes so far as to mock Roman celebrations of birth anniversaries, dismissing them as “pagan” practices—a strong indication that Jesus’ birth was not marked with similar festivities at that place and time.1 As far as we can tell, Christmas was not celebrated at all at this point. This stands in sharp contrast to the very early traditions surrounding Jesus’ last days. Each of the Four Gospels provides detailed information about the time of Jesus’ death. According to John, Jesus is crucified just as the Passover lambs are being sacrificed. This would have occurred on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Nisan, just before the Jewish holiday began at sundown (considered the beginning of the 15th day because in the Hebrew calendar, days begin at sundown). In Matthew, Mark and Luke, however, the Last Supper is held after sundown, on the beginning of the 15th. Jesus is crucified the next morning—still, the 15th.a Easter, a much earlier development than Christmas, was simply the gradual Christian reinterpretation of Passover in terms of Jesus’ Passion. Its observance could even be implied in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 5:7–8: “Our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the festival…”); it was certainly a distinctively Christian feast by the mid-second century C.E., when the apocryphal text known as the Epistle to the Apostles has Jesus instruct his disciples to “make commemoration of [his] death, that is, the Passover.” Jesus’ ministry, miracles, Passion and Resurrection were often of most interest to first- and early-second-century C.E. Christian writers. But over time, Jesus’ origins would become of increasing concern. We can begin to see this shift already in the New Testament. The earliest writings—Paul and Mark—make no mention of Jesus’ birth. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke provide well-known but quite different accounts of the event—although neither specifies a date. In the second century C.E., further details of Jesus’ birth and childhood are related in apocryphal writings such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-Gospel of James.b These texts provide everything from the names of Jesus’ grandparents to the details of his education—but not the date of his birth. Finally, in about 200 C.E., a Christian teacher in Egypt makes reference to the date Jesus was born. According to Clement of Alexandria, several different days had been proposed by various Christian groups. Surprising as it may seem, Clement doesn’t mention December 25 at all. Clement writes: “There are those who have determined not only the year of our Lord’s birth, but also the day; and they say that it took place in the 28th year of Augustus, and in the 25th day of [the Egyptian month] Pachon [May 20 in our calendar]…And treating of His Passion, with very great accuracy, some say that it took place in the 16th year of Tiberius, on the 25th of Phamenoth [March 21]; and others on the 25th of Pharmuthi [April 21] and others say that on the 19th of Pharmuthi [April 15] the Savior suffered. Further, others say that He was born on the 24th or 25th of Pharmuthi [April 20 or 21].”2 Clearly there was great uncertainty, but also a considerable amount of interest, in dating Jesus’ birth in the late second century. By the fourth century, however, we find references to two dates that were widely recognized—and now also celebrated—as Jesus’ birthday: December 25 in the western Roman Empire and January 6 in the East (especially in Egypt and Asia Minor). The modern Armenian church continues to celebrate Christmas on January 6; for most Christians, however, December 25 would prevail, while January 6 eventually came to be known as the Feast of the Epiphany, commemorating the arrival of the magi in Bethlehem. The period between became the holiday season later known as the 12 days of Christmas. The earliest mention of December 25 as Jesus’ birthday comes from a mid-fourth-century Roman almanac that lists the death dates of various Christian bishops and martyrs. The first date listed, December 25, is marked: natus Christus in Betleem Judeae: “Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea.”3 In about 400 C.E., Augustine of Hippo mentions a local dissident Christian group, the Donatists, who apparently kept Christmas festivals on December 25, but refused to celebrate the Epiphany on January 6, regarding it as an innovation. Since the Donatist group only emerged during the persecution under Diocletian in 312 C.E. and then remained stubbornly attached to the practices of that moment in time, they seem to represent an older North African Christian tradition. In the East, January 6 was at first not associated with the magi alone, but with the Christmas story as a whole. So, almost 300 years after Jesus was born, we finally find people observing his birth in midwinter. But how had they settled on the dates December 25 and January 6? There are two theories today: one extremely popular, the other less often heard outside scholarly circles (though far more ancient).4 The most loudly touted theory about the origins of the Christmas date(s) is that it was borrowed from pagan celebrations. The Romans had their mid-winter Saturnalia festival in late December; barbarian peoples of northern and western Europe kept holidays at similar times. To top it off, in 274 C.E., the Roman emperor Aurelian established a feast of the birth of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), on December 25. Christmas, the argument goes, is really a spin-off from these pagan solar festivals. According to this theory, early Christians deliberately chose these dates to encourage the spread of Christmas and Christianity throughout the Roman world: If Christmas looked like a pagan holiday, more pagans would be open to both the holiday and the God whose birth it celebrated. Despite its popularity today, this theory of Christmas’s origins has its problems. It is not found in any ancient Christian writings, for one thing. Christian authors of the time do note a connection between the solstice and Jesus’ birth: The church father Ambrose (c. 339–397), for example, described Christ as the true sun, who outshone the fallen gods of the old order. But early Christian writers never hint at any recent calendrical engineering; they clearly don’t think the date was chosen by the church. Rather they see the coincidence as a providential sign, as natural proof that God had selected Jesus over the false pagan gods. It’s not until the 12th century that we find the first suggestion that Jesus’ birth celebration was deliberately set at the time of pagan feasts. A marginal note on a manuscript of the writings of the Syriac biblical commentator Dionysius bar-Salibi states that in ancient times the Christmas holiday was actually shifted from January 6 to December 25 so that it fell on the same date as the pagan Sol Invictus holiday.5 In the 18th and 19th centuries, Bible scholars spurred on by the new study of comparative religions latched on to this idea.6 They claimed that because the early Christians didn’t know when Jesus was born, they simply assimilated the pagan solstice festival for their own purposes, claiming it as the time of the Messiah’s birth and celebrating it accordingly. More recent studies have shown that many of the holiday’s modern trappings do reflect pagan customs borrowed much later, as Christianity expanded into northern and western Europe. The Christmas tree, for example, has been linked with late medieval druidic practices. This has only encouraged modern audiences to assume that the date, too, must be pagan. There are problems with this popular theory, however, as many scholars recognize. Most significantly, the first mention of a date for Christmas (c. 200) and the earliest celebrations that we know about (c. 250–300) come in a period when Christians were not borrowing heavily from pagan traditions of such an obvious character. Granted, Christian belief and practice were not formed in isolation. Many early elements of Christian worship—including eucharistic meals, meals honoring martyrs and much early Christian funerary art—would have been quite comprehensible to pagan observers. Yet, in the first few centuries C.E., the persecuted Christian minority was greatly concerned with distancing itself from the larger, public pagan religious observances, such as sacrifices, games and holidays. This was still true as late as the violent persecutions of the Christians conducted by the Roman emperor Diocletian between 303 and 312 C.E. This would change only after Constantine converted to Christianity. From the mid-fourth century on, we do find Christians deliberately adapting and Christianizing pagan festivals. A famous proponent of this practice was Pope Gregory the Great, who, in a letter written in 601 C.E. to a Christian missionary in Britain, recommended that local pagan temples not be destroyed but be converted into churches, and that pagan festivals be celebrated as feasts of Christian martyrs. At this late point, Christmas may well have acquired some pagan trappings. But we don’t have evidence of Christians adopting pagan festivals in the third century, at which point dates for Christmas were established. Thus, it seems unlikely that the date was simply selected to correspond with pagan solar festivals. The December 25 feast seems to have existed before 312—before Constantine and his conversion, at least. As we have seen, the Donatist Christians in North Africa seem to have know it from before that time. Furthermore, in the mid- to late fourth century, church leaders in the eastern Empire concerned themselves not with introducing a celebration of Jesus’ birthday, but with the addition of the December date to their traditional celebration on January 6.7 There is another way to account for the origins of Christmas on December 25: Strange as it may seem, the key to dating Jesus’ birth may lie in the dating of Jesus’ death at Passover. This view was first suggested to the modern world by French scholar Louis Duchesne in the early 20th century and fully developed by American Thomas Talley in more recent years.8 But they were certainly not the first to note a connection between the traditional date of Jesus’ death and his birth. Around 200 C.E. Tertullian of Carthage reported the calculation that the 14th of Nisan (the day of the crucifixion according to the Gospel of John) in the year Jesus diedc was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman (solar) calendar.9 March 25 is, of course, nine months before December 25; it was later recognized as the Feast of the Annunciation—the commemoration of Jesus’ conception.10 Thus, Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. Exactly nine months later, Jesus was born, on December 25.d This idea appears in an anonymous Christian treatise titled On Solstices and Equinoxes, which appears to come from fourth-century North Africa. The treatise states: “Therefore our Lord was conceived on the eighth of the kalends of April in the month of March [March 25], which is the day of the passion of the Lord and of his conception. For on that day he was conceived on the same he suffered.”11 Based on this, the treatise dates Jesus’ birth to the winter solstice. Augustine, too, was familiar with this association. In On the Trinity (c. 399–419) he writes: “For he [Jesus] is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.”12 In the East, too, the dates of Jesus’ conception and death were linked. But instead of working from the 14th of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar, the easterners used the 14th of the first spring month (Artemisios) in their local Greek calendar—April 6 to us. April 6 is, of course, exactly nine months before January 6—the eastern date for Christmas. In the East too, we have evidence that April was associated with Jesus’ conception and crucifixion. Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis writes that on April 6, “The lamb was shut up in the spotless womb of the holy virgin, he who took away and takes away in perpetual sacrifice the sins of the world.”13 Even today, the Armenian Church celebrates the Annunciation in early April (on the 7th, not the 6th) and Christmas on January 6.e Thus, we have Christians in two parts of the world calculating Jesus’ birth on the basis that his death and conception took place on the same day (March 25 or April 6) and coming up with two close but different results (December 25 and January 6). Connecting Jesus’ conception and death in this way will certainly seem odd to modern readers, but it reflects ancient and medieval understandings of the whole of salvation being bound up together. One of the most poignant expressions of this belief is found in Christian art. In numerous paintings of the angel’s Annunciation to Mary—the moment of Jesus’ conception—the baby Jesus is shown gliding down from heaven on or with a small cross (see photo of detail from Master Bertram’s Annunciation scene); a visual reminder that the conception brings the promise of salvation through Jesus’ death. The notion that creation and redemption should occur at the same time of year is also reflected in ancient Jewish tradition, recorded in the Talmud. The Babylonian Talmud preserves a dispute between two early-second-century C.E. rabbis who share this view, but disagree on the date: Rabbi Eliezer states: “In Nisan the world was created; in Nisan the Patriarchs were born; on Passover Isaac was born…and in Nisan they [our ancestors] will be redeemed in time to come.” (The other rabbi, Joshua, dates these same events to the following month, Tishri.)14 Thus, the dates of Christmas and Epiphany may well have resulted from Christian theological reflection on such chronologies: Jesus would have been conceived on the same date he died, and born nine months later.15 In the end we are left with a question: How did December 25 become Christmas? We cannot be entirely sure. Elements of the festival that developed from the fourth century until modern times may well derive from pagan traditions. Yet the actual date might really derive more from Judaism—from Jesus’ death at Passover, and from the rabbinic notion that great things might be expected, again and again, at the same time of the year—than from paganism. Then again, in this notion of cycles and the return of God’s redemption, we may perhaps also be touching upon something that the pagan Romans who celebrated Sol Invictus, and many other peoples since, would have understood and claimed for their own too.16
Notes
1. Origen, Homily on Leviticus 8.
2. Clement, Stromateis 1.21.145. In addition, Christians in Clement’s native Egypt seem to have known a commemoration of Jesus’ baptism—sometimes understood as the moment of his divine choice, and hence as an alternate “incarnation” story—on the same date (Stromateis 1.21.146). See further on this point Thomas J. Talley, Origins of the Liturgical Year, 2nd ed. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), pp. 118–120, drawing on Roland H. Bainton, “Basilidian Chronology and New Testament Interpretation,” Journal of Biblical Literature 42 (1923), pp. 81–134; and now especially Gabriele Winkler, “The Appearance of the Light at the Baptism of Jesus and the Origins of the Feast of the Epiphany,” in Maxwell Johnson, ed., Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), pp. 291–347.
3. The Philocalian Calendar.
4. Scholars of liturgical history in the English-speaking world are particularly skeptical of the “solstice” connection; see Susan K. Roll, “The Origins of Christmas: The State of the Question,” in Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), pp. 273–290, especially pp. 289–290.
5. A gloss on a manuscript of Dionysius Bar Salibi, d. 1171; see Talley, Origins, pp. 101–102.
6. Prominent among these was Paul Ernst Jablonski; on the history of scholarship see especially Roll, “The Origins of Christmas,” pp. 277–283.
7. For example, Gregory of Nazianzen, Oratio 38; John Chrysostom, In Diem Natalem.
8. Louis Duchesne, Origines du culte Chrétien, 5th ed. (Paris: Thorin et Fontemoing, 1925), pp. 275–279; and Talley, Origins.
9. Tertullian, Adversus Iudaeos 8.
10. There are other relevant texts for this element of argument, including Hippolytus and the (pseudo-Cyprianic) De pascha computus; see Talley, Origins, pp. 86, 90–91.
11. De solstitia et aequinoctia conceptionis et nativitatis domini nostri iesu christi et iohannis baptistae.
12. Augustine, Sermon 202.
13. Epiphanius is quoted in Talley, Origins, p. 98.
14. b. Rosh Hashanah 10b–11a.
15. Talley, Origins, pp. 81–82.
16. On the two theories as false alternatives, see Roll, “Origins of Christmas.” a. See Jonathan Klawans, “Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?” BR 17:05. b. See the following BR articles: David R. Cartlidge, “The Christian Apocrypha: Preserved in Art,” BR 13:03; Ronald F. Hock, “The Favored One,” BR 17:03; and Charles W. Hedrick, “The 34 Gospels,” BR 18:03. c. For more on dating the year of Jesus’ birth, see Leonara Neville, “Fixing the Millennium,&rd; AO 03:01. d. The ancients were familiar with the 9-month gestation period based on the observance of women’s menstrual cycles, pregnancies and miscarriages. e. In the West (and eventually everywhere), the Easter celebration was later shifted from the actual day to the following Sunday. The insistence of the eastern Christians in keeping Easter on the actual 14th day caused a major debate within the church, with the easterners sometimes referred to as the Quartodecimans, or “Fourteenthers.” About the Author, Andrew McGowan Warden and President of Trinity College at the University of Melbourne, Australia, Andrew McGowan’s work on early Christianity includes God in Early Christian Thought (Brill, 2009) and Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford, 1999). Source: http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/christmas.asp
Siendo Dios Espíritu Santo estéril en la divinidad, es decir no produciendo ninguna otra persona divina, se volvió fecundo por María con quien se desposó. Es, efectivamente, con Ella y en Ella y de Ella, que Él ha producido su obra maestra, que es un Dios hecho hombre; y es también por medio de Ella, que Él produce todos los días hasta el fin del mundo a los predestinados y miembros del cuerpo de esa Cabeza adorable. He aquí el por qué cuanto más Él ve a María, su querida e indisoluble Esposa viviendo en un alma, más operante y poderoso se vuelve, para producir a Jesucristo en esta alma y a esta alma en Jesucristo. No es propiamente que se quiera decir que la Santísima Virgen da al Espíritu Santo la fecundidad, como si Él no la tuviera, ya que siendo Dios, tiene la fecundidad o la capacidad de producir como el Padre y el Hijo, a pesar de no reducirla al acto y en consecuencia no produciendo ninguna otra Persona divina. Con esto quiero decir que el Espíritu Santo, por intermedio de la Santísima Virgen de quien Él quiere servirse, aunque de ello no tendría absolutamente ninguna necesidad, puso en acto su fecundidad, produciendo a Jesucristo y a todos sus miembros en Ella y por Ella: misterio de gracia desconocido incluso a los más sabios y espirituales de entre los cristianos.
DIO A LUZ A SU PRIMOGENITO
GOD’S PLAN A WAS ALWAYS TO COME DOWN TO RAISE MANKIND TO HIS DIVINITY
A text used out of context as proof text is a pretext
ANSWERING COMMON JWS’ ARGUMENTS
Speaking by experience as a convert Catholic, I realized over and over again how utterly misinformed I had been on so many topics, whether due to the Jehovah’s Witness propaganda that I regurgitated again and again since I was born or just plain largely anti-Catholic so called “public” school education, media and rewritten History, which are all saturated by the Black Legend lies and fabricated facts that have been assimilated over the centuries as accepted “truths” that can be nowadays easily disproved with some serious impartial and honest research. Here are some examples of realities that I discovered that shocked me as I was told such a different story all along. The many references and links under RESEARCH will provide more detailed proofs of the fallacious reasoning of the below misconceptions among Jehovah’s witnesses.
“Why do Catholics worship Mary?”
Actually we don’t. We only worship God. We venerate her and give her Hyperdulia which is a special honor. In the Bible, worshipping involves sacrifice. Catholics only offer sacrifices to God, never to Mary. Bowing to anyone, human, Saint or image DOES NOT equate to worship in any form or shape. Whatever is offered to Mary is for her to adorn, purify, sanctify, cleanse and present to Her Son Jesus as a perfect offering so that He may intercede for us to the Father. SEE SECTION ON “Mary”.
“We are the only true religion on earth and Jehovah has been showing the light ever since the Bible Students started studying the Scriptures carefully at the end of the XIX Century as Proverb 18:1 reads: “But the path of the righteous is like the bright morning light that grows brighter and brighter until full daylight”. “
A lot of what JWs teach and preach is actually not their own and never has been.
The teaching that Jesus is an angel is a heresy invented by a heretical Catholic priest named Arius in the IV Century. The teaching of Arianism was condemned at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD. JWs did not get any new light nor did they invent anything. This heresy was unknown to first Century Christian. SEE SECTION ON “JESUS, ANGEL OR MAN”.
The teaching that The Holy Spirit is a force and not a person was likewise another invention of other heretical Catholics from the IV Century, called Pneumatomachi or Pneumatomachians, The term comes from Greek, meaning “fighters against the Spirit”. They were also called after the heretical Catholic Bishop of Constantinolple Macedonius and their group came to be known as the Macedonians. Pneumatomachianism or the Macedonian heresy was condemned at the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD. JWs did not invent anything nor did they have any new light coming from God. They are just recycling old heresies from heretical priests from the IV Century. SEE SECTIONS ON “THE HOLY SPIRIT” AND “THE HOLY TRINITY”.
The music used in the audio drama in the audio cassette of my childhood about the Israelites coming out of Egypt “Jehovah’s Name to Be Declared in All the Earth” is actually an extract from the “Tuba Mirum” of the Requiem of Giuseppe Verdi. That Requiem is a Catholic Mass to the Dead that Verdi premiered in 1874.
Reading the Bible at the Kingdom Hall every 3 years is nothing new. The Catholic liturgy for the mass follows a 3-year Sunday liturgical cycle (Cycles A, B, and C) which was implemented in the Catholic Church in 1969, following the Second Vatican Council. Previously Catholics had one year cycle with the Tridentine Mass. The Bible is also read at every single mass every single day of the year in 3 year-cycles. Yes, true Catholics do read the Bible and not only at mass. True Catholics are supposed to read the Bible every day at home too according to the Apsotolic Exhortation VERBUM DOMINI of Pope Benedict XVI of 2010 (See https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_ben-xvi_exh_20100930_verbum-domini.html) and also according to VERBUM DEI of Pope Paul VI of November 1965 (See https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html)
The name Jehovah was neither invented by nor is the property of JWs. Many Catholic Bibles use the term Yahve. The scribes “wrote the consonants YHWH using the vowel points for Adonai as a reminder to Jewish lectors to say “Adonai” instead of “Yahweh.” This custom of writing the consonants of one word with the vowels of another is where we get the English word “Jehovah.” In Latin, “YHWH” had become “JHWH,” and when combined with the vowels of Adonai—a, o, and a—it became “Jahowah,” which then became the English “Jehovah.” Some have argued that this usage began in the Christian Catholic community as early as the twelfth century, though it is often traced to 1518, when Petrus Galatinus, O.F.M. [a Catholic Franciscan Friar]—the confessor of Pope Leo X—published a book that popularized it. SEE SECTIONS ON “THE NAME OF GOD”.
The term “apostate” (or Latin variations such as apostatavit or apostata) appears in Catholic baptismal registers to denote a person who has formally abandoned, renounced, or defected from the Catholic faith. JWs did not invent anything. They are just re-using words that the Catholic church has been using for centuries.
The vows of chastity, obedience and poverty at Bethel are also copied from the vows that every nun or monk has been taking for centuries when entering a convent or a monastery.
I studied the official book of The Catechism of the Catholic Church which presents the dogmas and doctrines that the Catholic Church has held for 2 millenniums and I was shocked to find word for word some teachings that I had been taught to me as a JW about sin, the world, Satan and the flesh. I also did some research about some of the collaborators of Charles Taze Russell and evangelical trends of the XIX Century about the Millennium Reign and I was surprised to find identical teachings and similar end of the world views in other Protestant denominations. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are a relatively “new” 150-year old religion but they did not invent anything really… They are just recycling and mixing some truths, invented teachings and outright heresies…
I can go on and on but this is what my website is here for…
We will all render account and answer to Jesus personally for the heresies that we were led to believe and spread without ever checking our sources, blaspheming the divinity of Jesus, sullying the Holy Name of God and staining the reputation of the Holiest woman who ever walked on earth the Holy Virgin Mary.
Insisting Bible in hand pushing the fallacious argument that Jesus had brothers while the same term “adelphoi” is also used in 1st Corinthians 15:6 saying that Jesus appeared to 500 “adelphoi” and being adamant that Mary had sex with any man and had other children is an insult, a public calumny and an outrage to any virgin woman and especially to the Holy Virgin Mary. She is right here, every day, she watches us, hears us, loves us and helps us with her intercession and JWs never asked themselves once if they are actually spreading calumnies against an innocent woman who does exist and who is the witness of the lies that have been spread against her under a false varnish of godly devotion just because JWs and other protestants never took the time to check their sources before going around staining her reputation. SEE SECTION ON “THE VIRGIN MARY”.
“The human body does not have a soul. The Bible said in Genesis 2:7 that when God breathed in his nostrils the breath of life he “became a living soul”, he “came to “be” not that he came to “have” a soul.”
Actually that is correct. JWs say that Catholics believe that bodies have a soul. That accusation is not accurately theologically founded and anyone saying the contrary does not know Catholic theology. The Catholic Church teaches that a human person is composed of 2 undissociable components: a body and a soul. The body does not “have” a soul. One does not possess the other. The body does not possess a soul and the soul does not possess a body. The human person IS the ensemble of those 2 characteristics and when Adam and Eve were created, these 2 components were undivisable, undissociable, unseparable. When Adam and Eve sinned, the punishement was death, the separation of those 2 previouly undissociable entities and the decompositon of the human body into dirt. But originally, death – or the separation of the two – was not part of the divine plan. It is the consequence of the original sin. ABSOLUTE MUST SEE VIDEO: THE BODY AND THE SOUL WERE ONE BEFORE SIN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgqA59NVfAE To see more on the soul and why it has never been a pagan doctrine, SEE SECTION ON “THE SOUL”.
“Why did millions of Catholics kill millions of Catholic in the two World Wars?”
Presented like this, this statement seems very convincing and JWs proudly boast to be the only religion as such who as a group opposed Hitler and that a JW never killed another JW and therefore they are the only true religion on earth, citing “by the love you have among you they will recognize you are my true disciples”, and the Isaiah 2 : 4 prophecy that in the new ‘spiritual paradise’ – as they believe they are in -, “they will turn their swords into plowshares”.
Well the truth and life is a little more complicated than those simple fallacious statements.
In the Bible there is a concept of just wars and every JW knows it. God the Father Jehovah is the same in the Old and the New Testament and He does not change. See Malaqui 3 :6. The concept of “millions of Catholics” killed “millions of Catholics” first of all is a gross misrepresentation of reality. It is the same exaggeration that Protestants and JWs use when they claim that the Catholic Inquisition killed millions of Protestants without ever even looking at historical real facts and figures and therefore they come up with ludicrous statements such as these. Catholics did not run around killing other Catholics just for fun. One has to be more precise and study each war in their context. The 2 World Wars do offer undeniable cases when on both sides Catholics were massively involved yet instead of putting all of them in the same basket and playing the ostrich policy, bury their heads in the sand as JWs do and play the strict neutrality card which would have led the world nowhere but to end up under a dictatorial worldwide nightmare under German and Nazi regimes if no one had ever had the courage to sacrifice their lives for a greater cause. This concept of just modern war is something foreign to JWs but it is very much alive in the Catholic view of God’s justice. After analyzing the issue from a righteous war standpoint, the question is therefore reduced to asking, not why all Catholics participated in the two World Wars, bur rather after establishing that the side fighting for peace and protection of life was absolutely justified, the question boils down to why some Catholic decided to participate on the wrong side and backup tacitly or actively the evil plans of the aggressor as Hitler’s. And here we go again, going back to falling in the same judging game that JWs love playing that cements the JW mentality of criticizing, judging and condemning others who made mistakes, acted out of fear or did not have the courage to stand up till death, while closing their eyes upon all the testimonies of so many Catholics who did refuse to support Hitler one way or another, many until martyrdom. The statement of Naaman shed lights also on the impossible position of some officials serving under evil rulers in 2 Kings 5:18. Each person will render account to God for their actions and JWs are no judges to condemn the Catholics who lived under the Nazi regime and did not have the courage to refuse enlisting… Only God knows. SEE SECTION “NEUTRALITY AND JUST WARS”.
“How come the General Franco, who was supposedly a devout Catholic, was the same as all the other dictators and killed millions of innocent people?”
Check your sources. Verify the facts. Study the true historical context of the Franco regime. Differentiate what truly happened from rewritten anti-Catholic History and propaganda. In 1936, the Republican government let Bolshevik Communists and local revolutionary committees take over and systematically burn Catholic churches, kill, rape and torture Catholic priests, nuns and even laity. Note that the political dynamics were very different from that of today and I was surprised to learn that the “Republicans” in Spain in 1936 had nothing to do with what we understand as “Republicans” in politics in the United States and France nowadays. In 1936 Spain, “Republicans” were the left-leaning, democratically elected government and its supporters (socialists, communists, anarchists, liberals), a broad political Coalition forming the “Popular Front,” including socialist (PSOE), communist (PCE), and anarchist groups, alongside liberal and regional parties.
I myself went to Paracuellos which is a site of mass graves outside Madrid and there are thousands of bodies of Catholics that were shot dead right before Franco managed to enter and liberate the city. The popular History books and documentaries omit to tell the atrocities that were taking place in the 30s BEFORE Franco ever got into power. In my neighborhood in Madrid, I was horrified to discover that my very church as many others in Madrid was actually burnt to the ground in 1936. The same year, the Basilica nearby was totally destroyed except the walls and the stained glass windows and it was transformed into a cinema. I was horrified to see in every church in the area pictures of martyred monks and nuns, among them Daughters of Charity, Vincentians Lazarists of the Mission, Redemptorists of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, Seminarists murdered at the Cerro de Los Angeles and so many more… The Communists had the same hard line as in Russia and their goal was openly to eradicate God and the Catholic Church.
The historical facts and stories are more mitigated than what I had been told my whole life and they must be put into a specific context and need to be reconsidered by a careful study of verified truthful testimonies and not just hearsay or some anti-Catholic propaganda including one-sided popular movies.
SEE THE MANY VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES AND BOOKS IN THE SECTION “The Spanish Persecution of Catholics”.
“Why did the Spanish Inquisition kill millions of Protestants?”
It didn’t. Check your facts. Separate true History from the Black Legend. The truth is that the Spanish Inquisition was made not for protestants or people outside the church but for Catholics inside the Catholic Church who pretended to be Catholic but wanted to pervert the faith or practice other heresies under the cover of being a Catholic. The reality is that the Spanish Inquisition was the first tribunal to have court processes with written annals and was preferred by any accused person or defendant to the general state courts. In 300 years, the Inquisition condemned a great maximum of 3000 people, nothing in comparison with what Protestants did in other countries. There are court annals that can be studied today. Priests and monks did not have power to torture nor kill anyone as it is depicted in anti-Catholic Hollywood movies. After being processed, the accused who preferred not to amend their ways were given to the state courts for punishment. Great Spanish Catholic Saints themselves such as Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross were prosecuted by the Spanish Inquisition so claiming that millions of Protestants were the poor victims of the Spanish Inquisition is a completely false statement. SEE THE SECTIONS “The Inquisition” AND “The Protestants”.
“Why did the Catholic Church prohibit the use of the name Jehovah and removed it from its Bibles?”
This statement is not completely true.
In 2008, there was indeed an official letter from the Vatican to all Bishops’ Conferences prohibiting the approximative translation of the Tetragrammaton as noone really knows how it was pronounced. SEE https://www.usccb.org/resources/name-of-god.pdf
I discovered to my great surprise that the name “Yahve” or “Yahweh” DOES STILL appear in many Catholic Bibles and this name is read during the Catholic mass in the reading of the Liturgy of the Word or the Liturgy of the Holy Scriptures from the pulpit! It is the case in my very own church!! “To avoid taking the Holy Name of God in vain and therefore to avoid breaking the 2nd Commandment”, the Catholic Church has taken the same approach as devout Jews who preferred an alternative not to sully the Holy name of God. No one is sure of the exact pronunciation of the original Tetragrammaton YHWH. The scribes “wrote the consonants YHWH using the vowel points for Adonai as a reminder to Jewish lectors to say “Adonai” instead of “Yahweh.” This custom of writing the consonants of one word with the vowels of another is where we get the English word “Jehovah.” In Latin, “YHWH” had become “JHWH,” and when combined with the vowels of Adonai—a, o, and a—it became “Jahowah,” which then became the English “Jehovah.” Some have argued that this usage began in the Christian community as early as the twelfth century, though it is often traced to 1518, when Petrus Galantinus, O.F.M. [a Catholic Franciscan Friar]—the confessor of Pope Leo X—published a book that popularized it.”
If one travels a little around the world, actually many evangelist denominations commonly use the very same name “Jehovah” while the Catholic Liturgy prefers to use “Yahweh” or “THE LORD” for the aforementioned reasons. The JWs are neither the inventors nor the keepers nor the only users of the name Jehovah or Yahweh as most of them proudly believe. For more see https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/yahweh. SEE THE SECTION “The Name of God”.
Also, JWs love to pride themselves in believing and promoting that they have some kind of primacy on God’s name and that they are the ones who restored it where it was originally in the Bible “7000 times” and therefore give due glory to God. Where the biggest fallacy resides is that they fail to realize that not only the Catholic Church, as the Jews did, always had at heart the First Commandment never to take the Holy Name of God in vain, but also that true worship and giving glory to God start with recognizing Who He is and What He says He is. Rejecting what God Himself explains of Him being a Holy Trinity, God The Father, God The Son and God The Holy Spirit and relegating the Second Person of the Holy Trinity The Logos to the mere status of an angelic creature (JWs have no idea that they are actually. recycling an old Third Century heresy from Arianism) and demoting the Third Person of the Holy Trinity to the rank of a mere force instead of a Person is nothing less than a purely demonic blasphemy and their teachings sully the very Name that they claim to glorify, not to mention the other blasphemies they spread against the Holy Virgin Mary, Mother of God The Son!
WATCH ¿JEHOVÁ O YAHVÉ? El increíble error histórico sobre el Nombre de Dios. El Tetragrámaton.
“Why does the Catholic Church teach non biblical doctrines?”
It doesn’t. I was told and taught repeatedly that Catholics do not use the Bible, that they do not know their Bible and that they believe in pagan doctrines that came from Platonism like the immortality of the soul. This is a caricature and a misconception. What set me thinking is when I heard the National Choir of Spain sing the TE DEUM of Anton Brukner and a few month later when I got to sing as a chorist soprano the REQUIEM of Gabriel Faure, both classical works of Catholic liturgy and almost every single line is from the Holy Scriptures!!! I was amazed. That was whta got me to do some serious reserach for the first time. And later when I attended my first Catholic mass ever, I was even more schocked to see how Catholics read from the Old Testament, and then the Psalms (and also the epistles on Sundays) and then a portion of the Gospel at every single mass every single day!!! They actually cover the entire Bible in 3 years! Another thing that JWs have copied from the Catholic Church! All the doctrines of the Catholic Church are not just “based on the Scriptures” as if the Bible was some tool to manipulate to make it prove and say what we want it to say to attack and disprove those’ Catholics that are so wrong; as in JW mentality, no! The Catholic doctrines ARE THE SCRIPTURES, THEY ARE THE VERY MEANING AND APPLICATION OF THE SCRIPTURES and they flow directly from Jesus, the Apostles, the written Sacred Scriptures and also what the Apostles taught orally that came down to us throughout the centuries. It is not because the average Catholic Joe is not capable of going back and forth Bible in hand as some Protestants and most Jehovah’s Witnesses do that the Catholic teachings are pagan. If one studies carefully the official Catechism of the Catholic Church, he will realize that every single teaching of the Catholic Faith, every single line of the Credo – which summarizes the Catholic faith – stems directly from the Holy Scriptures, and there are thousands of Bible references given in the Official Catechism Reference book that I studied line by line with a priest in a special individual one-to-one catechism course, more than in any Watchtower. I was actually surprised to discover that many JW teachings have copied word for word some Catholic dogmas and Catholic line of reasoning from the Catechism book, like on the topic of the original sin for example. JWs did not invent anything. They are things JWs teach that are explained perfectly in the Catechism book and we all know that The Church was there way before. At Bethel they even copy the 3 vows of obedience, poverty and chastity that monks and nuns profess the day they take the habit. The Catholic teaching system is very different from the JWs. Because most Europe was entirely Catholic for Centuries , their focus never was for each individual to manipulate the Bible as Protestants do to disprove and convert others. When everyone is Catholic and you have the true faith, you do not need to know your Bible by heart nor do you need to go from door to door when everyone in town goes to church as you do. Also I realized how the Church has been addressing all people from its beginning, including the most uneducated and illiterate people in all parts of the world. Therefore for centuries, the Church used basic tools and techniques to teach simple people when and where for centuries there were no schools nor any books available. Imagine teaching Indians in America in the XVI century crossings lakes and rivers among hostile tribes and you get the idea. How do you carry a huge Gutenberg style Bible with you in those remote parts of the desert, Bible which cost a fortune to possess to start with? Or how did Saint Thomas go preach to people as far as modern India back in the First Century? Not on a plane nor by car, no Bible in hand which did not even exist yet as we know it today, no tablet, no books, few precious codex or papyrus scrolls available, It is easy to criticize in a modern world where everyone takes for granted the fact that everyone now can read and everybody goes to school by law. It was not the case even a century ago and even less several centuries back so imagine the level of education of common people or total lack of it way back in the first centuries of the Church! The purpose of the Church has never been to make theologians out of people, rather to save all of us, and this whatever the epoch, the social status and education level which was null for most people for centuries. That is why monks were in charge of educating people for many centuries during the Middle Age and only a few people had access or could go to those schools because the social and economic system was different. Most people just had to work manually from an early age to make ends meet. And the sheer volume of the people to teach is worth pondering on. Today the JWs are 8 millions yet Catholics are 1 300 000 000. And for centuries, almost the whole civilized world was Catholic. We are not talking about a micro teaching enterprise in the XX Century only as the JWs’ have in their kingdom halls. We are talking about catechizing entire countries and teaching thousands of people who go to one parish with one priest or a couple more available. Another example, what about the first Apostles and later disciples and missionaries preaching in the I, II, III Centuries, through 10 waves of brutal persecution, to Barbarians, Romans, Greeks, slaves, illiterate people, from Spain to India, with no books, some papyrus, a few scrolls, maybe a codex to take on those trips on dirt roads among dangers at sea, in ambush, in hostile countries whose inhabitants spoke many different languages. Nothing to do with the modern suitcases, books and tablets witnesses use from door to door. The Catholic preaching work was not born in 1879 with books and printed material available as in the time of Charles Taze Russell. It comes from a different perspective, oral teaching inherited from the very first centuries when there was no other way. That is why today, the Catholic education system is so different from that of JWs. Also it is not because a JW has studied well all his Watchtowers for decades – as I had always done my whole life – and is able to go back and forth in any book of the Bible, that he necessarily “knows the real truth”. It would equate to someone today asking AI anything and taking its word as the Word of God and thinking he knows the truth. Far from it! He was just fed lies, semi-truths or recycled unverified statements. What a JW believes as being the truth is no more than the uninspired interpretation that some human members of their “Governing Body” gives them claiming to come from God. A lot of the arguments that JWs use from door to door are just fallacies well studied and repeated blindly while they trust whoever wrote the “publication”, books such as the Reasoning book, They repeat word for word what it says without ever verifying the sources to check if that it is truly so. For example, I myself used many times the argument that Jesus had fleshly brothers because the word used in Matthew 13 : 55, 56 is ‘adelphoi’ which in Greek meant supposesly natural brothers, and I proudly read the paragraph quoting the ‘New Catholic Encyclopedia” “admitting” things between quotes as if the Catholic Church knows the truth but hides it voluntarily from the faithful, which is the same accusation that Satan used against God Himself in the garden of Eden. I had never studied the official Catechism of the Catholic Church before nor had I realized that the same term ‘adelphoi’ is used where Jesus appeared to “500 brothers” or “adelphoi” in I Corinthians 15 :6 in the original Greek text. Check any interlinear Bible. Case closed. I believe that I do not need to explain what this implies. This is how superficial and varnish thin was my knowledge and all the seemingly incredible counter-arguments and oulala Greek words JWs bring from door to door and believe in. I know. Me too, I was shocked to discover how ignorant I was while believing I knew so much having studied and read the Bible close to 20 times cover to cover in 40 years as a zealous devout JW. When the scales fall from one’s eyes, one feels very small…
“How come Catholics celebrate Halloween while it is a pagan and Satanic celebration?”
Actually true Catholics DO NOT celebrate Halloween and discovering this was a source of great joy for me. True priests will unveil the demonic character of this celebration from the pulpit and show the faithful that true Christians do not want to have anything to do with the going around in the streets dressed up as witches, devils, vampires and other demonic figures reenacting spiritistic practices in what is a Satanic celebrations. When I heard the priest in my very first parish (before I was even baptized Catholic) condemn unequivocally Halloween, I felt so proud to be studying the Catholic faith!!! The problem is that many Catholics today are only Catholics by name, they do not practice their faith, do not know the origins of most worldly celebrations and just go with the flow. That is a tragedy. Many Catholics have no idea of the treasure they have in the Holy Eucharist and they let themselves be corrupted by endless novelties and worldly practices and celebrations just to live the “normal life” as the rest of the population. This being said, the Catholic Church does not bless nor condone nor encourage and it rejects that celebration.
It is worth mentioning that the actual word “Halloween” was originally a Catholic celebration. The Church used to celebrate the “Triduum of Death”, sometimes known as Allhallowtide, three days of solemn masses, the first being the Vespers of the Day of the Saints, in old English All Hallows Eve, which is the Eve of the day the Church prays for all the Saints and martyrs that have already joined God in Heaven which is the second day of that Triduum.
The third day is All Souls’ Day, the day the Church celebrates all the departed that are believed to be in Purgatory.
In 1955, the 1st day of the Triduum was removed from the liturgical calendar and it ended up being adopted by non-Catholics to refer to a pagan celebration that has nothing to do with the Catholic Church. Actually, I found out in my research that this is a great tactic of the Devil, to take former names of Catholic traditions and feasts and degenerate their meaning to make them mean something else. Ask anyone today what is a “Kermesse” and most people have no clue that it used to be “the mass” (“messe”) of the “Church” (‘Kerk’ in Dutch) for the patron saint of a village. Nowadays many people believe it is simply the end of the school year party!!!
What the devil has done to “Christmas” is even more appalling and JWs with other Protestants end up believing that it is the Catholics that adopted the pagan practices while it is the opposite: it is the demonic world that has corrupted a liturgical holy celebration and used its name to make it mean something that it is not and now in most people’s minds it equates to tons of practices that have nothing to do with the Mass of Christ celebrating His Birth into this world!!! But true Catholic Christians are not fooled and to participate with them during the Advent season in constant prayer, worship and comtemplative meditation, penitence and retreats to prepare our hearts to receive the Son of God, so far from the commercial madness of this world, is truly sobering. Nothing to do with how the world portrays Christmas and what JWs think it is. For more, SEE SECTION ON “HALLOWEEN, ALL SAINTS’ DAY, ALL SOULS’ DAY”, “CHRISTMAS”.
“The Solemnity of All Saints is celebrated on November 1. It is a solemnity, a holyday of obligation and the day that the Church honors all of God’s saints, even those who have not been canonized by the Church. It is a family day of celebration—we celebrate the memory of those family members (sharing with us in the Mystical Body, the doctrine of the Communion of Saints) now sharing eternal happiness in the presence of God. We rejoice that they have reached their eternal goal and ask their prayers on our behalf so that we, too, may join them in heaven and praise God through all eternity. The honoring of all Christian martyrs of the Faith was originally celebrated on May 13, the date established by the fourth century. Pope Boniface IV in 615 established it as the “Feast of All Martyrs” commemorating the dedication of the Pantheon, an ancient Roman temple, into a Christian church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the martyrs. By 741, the feast included not only martyrs, but all the saints in heaven as well, with the title changing to “Feast of All Saints” by 840. In 844, Pope Gregory IV transferred the feast to November 1st, timing it around the harvests to be able to provide food for the pilgrims. Some scholars believe this was to substitute a feast for the pagan celebrations during that time of year. Pope Sixtus IV in 1484 established November 1 as a holyday of obligation and gave it both a vigil (known today as “All Hallows’ Eve” or “Hallowe’en”) and an eight-day period or octave to celebrate the feast. This feast is marked with liturgical observances that have changed over the centuries. By 1955, the octave and vigil of All Saints were abrogated. Instead of a separate vigil on the calendar, the celebration begins the evening before, as mentioned in The General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar“”
“Why do Catholics bless gay unions?”
True Catholics don’t and never will. Again there is a difference between what the Church teaches and what some individual Catholics going off the deep end do. That is two different things. The official Catholic Church does not and never will. In some intent to reach out to the LGBTI community and make them feel welcome in the Catholic Church the same as Jesus spoke and looked for the sinners and prostitutes in His time, the late Pope Francis had promulgated the controversial declaration of Fiducia Supplicans in 2023 that many faithful Cardinals, Bishops and laity deplore till this day. The text in itself does not go against any Church teachings per say but does open the door to double entendre, stretched applications and ambiguities, whether it was his intention or not. Pope Leon XIV has repeatedly clarified the firm stand of the Church on the question of homosexuality since his appointment. It is sad to say though, that some individual priests around the world and mostly German bishops have taken upon themselves to go ahead to bless and give directions to bless gay unions, which Pope Leo XIV condemns. The Church not being run like the JWs where nothing can be done in their organization without the approval of the World Headquarters at Warwick (formerly at Brooklyn), I was the first to wonder why all those rogue priests and bishops have not yet been excommunicated if I were to view things from a JW standpoint. That is a new perspective I am learning in the Catholic Church. Jesus has tolerated many things up to the highest spheres of His Church, the same as He never did anything about Judas Iscariot although He knew what what going on. His very words in Revelation chapter 2 verses 2 to 4 to the congregation of Ephesus are more than ever applying to today’s church: “ “I know your works, your labor, and your endurance, and that you cannot tolerate the wicked; you have tested those who call themselves apostles but are not, and discovered that they are impostors. 3 Moreover, you have endurance and have suffered for my name, and you have not grown weary. 4 Yet I hold this against you: you have lost the love you had at first…” Jesus sees everything, takes notes, waits and will asks each person to render account for their deeds and lack of love or zeal sooner or later. As for Him, He is still there, inside His Church, as the Head of His Church and He will never abandon Her as the JW claim. Jesus remains present in the Holy Eucharist and in every other Sacrament of the Church.
“Why don’t Catholics preach the good news as Jesus commanded in Matthew 28:19,20 and Matthew 24:14?”
For Jehovah’s Witnesses, the world had to wait for Charles Taze Russell to come and start the Watchtower in 1879 and start preaching campaigns with speaker phones, international travels and conferences, debates and finally door to door work for Matthew 24:14 to be finally fulfilled in the XXth Century. For us Catholics, that prophecy started to be fulfilled in the First Century when all the apostles and disciples literally preached in all the known inhabited world of that time, Saint Thomas going as far as India and Saint James as far as Spain before the end and destruction of the Jewish system in 70CE. And throughout the centuries, the good news about Jesus Resurrected and present in the Holy Eucharist in all the Catholic Churches of the world has been preached in “all the inhabited earth” so much so that anyone can have and has had access to a mass anywhere in the world, and this was before the JWs ever showed up. That has already been fulfilled centuries ago. God did not wait for Charles Taze Russell to come some 1850 years after Jesus nor did he leave the entire world in total darkness for 18 centuries. It is actually ludicrous to think that Jesus would have come to bring salvation and that the Devil would have been much stronger than Him so much so as to shut down the truth and infiltrate the first church with so much apostasy that everything after the death of the last apostle John is to be thrown away, as the JWs understand and explain the parable of the enemy sowing weeds while the workers were asleep. That is an insult to God to say that His Divine Purpose was on hold for all those centuries. It does not make any sense whatsoever. God’s actions are not subject to such human failures and consideration to leave the entire mankind without light for 18 centuries. Yes, from the first century onwards there have been apostates within the Catholic Church – like Arius whose Arianism teachings still pollute the head of millions of JWs today – who have tried to infiltrate and pervert Jesus’ true teachings to this very day but they have all failed and will continue to fail. The conciles have clarified the faith and disproved many growing heresies those apostates tried to sow and now the Church teachings remain intact. Yes, Jesus has ordained to let the weeds and the good wheat grow today and that is why throughout the centuries there have been saints alongside heretics inside the Catholic Church and paganized laity, without mentioning freemasonic and corrupt bishops and priests, but the Church still stands, the official teachings of the Catholic Church are still intact despite the attacks of the devil. The martyrdom of thousands and thousands of Catholic Christians who died for their faith and still adorn the streets, squares and churches of all Europe by their names is an undeniable testimony that the JWs either decide deliberately to throw under the carpet or for others like myself genuinely ignored as I did, never paying much attention to the origins of these traces of Centuries of Catholic sainthood all around us. These are not made up legends. These were real people who lived the Catholic faith and died preaching the good news so much so that buildings, public places and churches still bear their names today despite the ongoing efforts of socialist and communist governments to eradicate any traces of them. The historical testimony is there for who honestly wants to see and investigate.
“Why did the Catholic Pope make a pact with Hitler and did not say anything against the horrors of Nazism?”
Again the facts of the History of WWII are more mitigated that the black and white version that the JW publications have served for decades to their readers simplifying the matter to some meeting and pact that the Catholic German Vice Chancellor Von Papen signed with the Cardinal Secretary of State of the Vatican Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli in 1933 who would later become Pope Pius XII in 1939. The efforts of the Church to seek peace and save lives are never mentioned nor the heroic acts and sacrifice of courageous Catholics. The Pope did not get the approval of all the bishops in the signing of the Reichskonkordat.
Also in the Catholic Church, the Pope does not dictate people to refuse a party card and therefore be ready to be slaughtered as the JWs were in Malawi while at the same time allowing Mexican JWs to get the election card and even now in the present day after decades of strict neutrality policy and thousands of dead JWs for being strictly politically neutral, let the JWs decide to vote or not, according to their conscience. See JW WATCHOWER ARTICLE OF THE JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES: “Questions From Readers – How do Jehovah’s Witnesses view voting?“
“As to whether they [Jehovah’s Witnesses] will personally vote for someone running in an election, each one of Jehovah’s Witnesses makes a decision based on his Bible-trained conscience and an understanding of his responsibility to God and to the State…. In view of the Scriptural principles outlined above, in many lands Jehovah’s Witnesses make a personal decision not to vote in political elections, and their freedom to make that decision is supported by the law of the land. What, though, if the law requires citizens to vote? In such a case, each Witness is responsible to make a conscientious, Bible-based decision about how to handle the situation. If someone decides to go to the polling booth, that is his decision. What he does in the polling booth is between him and his Creator.” END OF QUOTE OF JW ARTICLE.
Absolutely incredible!!! When I was a child in the 1980’s and we were praying for the tortured and butchered witnesses of Malawi, that was not the case. There was no “according to your conscience” principle. In the JW religion you could get excommunicated for accepting a blood transfusion and not being neutral!! My cousins went to jail for not doing their military service. But the Catholic Church does not play hard line one day or in one country and then wishy washy on another day or in another country. Also, the Catholic Church is not just composed of a few hundreds of thousand people as the JWs are in many countries, we are talking about entire country blocks and millions of people. True Catholics worship and live their lives with Christ residing in their hearts and as such if all the Catholics personnally lived as Jesus did there would be no war. It is easy to criticize in the aftermath when one was not there. Many courageous Catholic martyrs did die during WWII. Each Catholic must act according to his conscience before God. But one thing is sure, the Pope does not give mandate to oblige people to do one thing or another as the World Headquarters of JWs do. The Catholic Church is NOT a dictatorship. Jesus never was. There is no diktat as in the JWs guideline that ended up in many instances equating to ask people to be martyrs and give their lives to be neutral. Also, Jesus Christ is still in the Holy Eucharist and He has not left His Church and everyone, pope, bishop or laity did and will render an account to Jesus himself for their actions. The Virgin Mary herself warned and tried to save many lives in her messages at Fatima for example. A lot of the peace on earth depends upon us and our personal actions and prayers. Good, bad or mediocre popes all did and will render account to Jesus as Peter did in all his cowardice, denials and ever later pretense with the Jews out of a recurring problem of fear. But for some reason, he was the very one Jesus chose as Pope. It is funny that when JWs commit sins, the JWs themselves say that their ” organization is perfect but made up imperfect people” Yet that very principle they only apply it to themselves dishonestly and would never understand nor admit that the Catholic Church IS pure and Holy and it is THE ONLY CHURCH JESUS FOUNDED in the First Century that He still inhabits through His presence in the Holy Sacraments and the Holy Eucharist yet He does let sinners be part of His Body The Holy Church. That equals saying the same thing as they do when they want to explain wrongdoing in their organization.
SEE SECTIONS “Be no part of the world”, “Mary – Approved Apparitions”, “Saints – Maximilian Kolbe”, “Neutrality & Just Wars”
“How come Catholics do politics while we should be “no part of the world”?”
This is a great question and one of the hurdles that I faced during my conversion process. It is funny that some of my walls came down by themselves as I realized there was a bunch of things in my JW faith that I believed just because they had told me so, and not because of any substantial proof or convincing arguments, nor actual Bible basis. For example all the interpretations of Revelation, Daniel or the end times prophecies are pretty much at the whim of some Governing Body member’s mood or opinion, which is the reason why they changed their understanding so many times. If you study some of the other 40 000 Protestant denominations (and I do say “other” Protestant denominations as, although the JWs will vehemently deny being part of any Protestant movement, you will be surprised to realize how much they ahve in common and how almost everything they believe in comes from some rebellion and protesting crtiticism against the catholic Church… As someone says, if what you believe is defined mainly by what you oppose, it shows how superficial your beliefs are…”) which reject the Pope, the Magisterium and the Catholic Tradition, you realize that they all interpret the Scriptures their way, according to the words or supposedly “divine inspiration” of their founders, some arguments being more or less convincing exactly like those of the JWs. Once you reject the fact that the main channel and approved church is the Catholic Church, anyone can say, pretend, invent or teach pretty much anything, thus the cacophony of sects and movements that came out since the Reformation.
This question of neutrality was different. I realized how core it had been to my entire life’s perspective, way of life, my childhood, my education, my rapport with the outside world. Because I was “no part of the world” as I had read over and over and over again in the New World Translation of their Bible in a spam of 40 years of my life since I was born, it was normal for me not to fit in anywhere, not to play with others at school, never to go to some schoolmates’ house, never to celebrate anything and never to receive any gift (I remember receiving once a pair of earrings when my father came back from a business trip in French Guyana, that is the only memory of a gift I have – not all JWs families may be the same but that was my personal experience). Even growing up, I remember going to do a school project at the house of a girl from my class when I was 17, first and last time in my entire life. Never voted. Never got interested in politics. Never crossed my mind to go to the Military although the idea of the discipline would have been something I would have loved. Never had a birthday, no Christmas ever, no celebrations whatsover. Never had coffee with a non witness before I was 42 years old. Never had a friend who was not a witness. In my mind we were “separate from the world” in ALL aspects. The world was bad as “the whole world is under the power of the evil one” (I John 5 : 19).
I was surprised to discover 2 different realities:
1 – The original text actually does not read “be no part of the world.” In John 17: 14 and also 15: 19 in the original Greek that appears in any interlinear, the text reads: “Not they are of the world even as I not am of the world” and “if of the world you were, the world as its own would love you, because however of the world not you are…”
That is to say that as true Christians we do not ORIGINATE from the world, we do not COME from the world, we do not find our SOURCE in the world but in God as we are HIS CHILDREN, Sons of God by our Holy Catholic Baptism. We are reborn in the Water and Spirit and the world has no hold on us. Jesus himself said that He did not ask His Father to take us out of the world and therefore we continue to live in the world and participate in its activities and bring the light of Christ to its darkest corners. In the Catholic view, this concept of originating from God is deep and this is what Jesus was trying to explain to Nicodemus when telling him that one needs to be “born again”, to be “born from above” in John chapter 3. As the JWs do not have any of the sacraments not become “sons and daughters of God” by the Holy Catholic Baptism “in the Name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”, they have no notion of the depth of what it truly means, therefore the notion of originating from God as a new creation is not a JW concept .
2 – Many First Christians had high positions of government, in the military and they held them with honor to the peril of their lives and many died martyrs for not participating in pagan worship but holding these positions and high ranks was not absolutely incompatible with being a Christian in the first centuries and they did not automatically relinquish their employment upon becoming Christians as JWs do. Some are actually mentioned in the Bible and it is clear even in the Scriptures that they did not necessarily forsake their position upon embracing the Catholic faith: Cornelius and Sergius Paulus are respectively mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles chapter 10 and 13 and the members of “Caesar’s household” in the Epistle to the Philippians chapter 4. Also Philemon and the jailer of Acts chapter 16. Later the Catholic tradition speaks of many more such as Longinius, Saint Martin of Tours, Saint Sebastian, Saint George, Tertullian, St. Maurice and the Theban Legion, Emperor Constantine I… It seems that the early Church did not universally forbid the participation in the military. Still true Christians would not take part to any pagan practices and therefore many Christian soldiers were martyred.
“Why do Catholics use Apocryphal books in their canon?”
Actually we do not. The Protestants in their Reformation decided to follow the Canon that the Catholic Church had established for Centuries except 7 books. They argued that these books did not appear in the Masoretic text that the Jews produced after Jesus. Yet these 7 books did appear the highly respected Septuagint Version that dates before Jesus and which is THE reference that Jesus and the first century Christians used in His ministry and that is quoted in the New Testament.
Protestants removed those books as they contradicted their new doctrine of “Sola Fide” and their stand on the “prayers for the dead.
The Jews removed those 7 books as for example the book of Wisdom as it had clearly prophesied the treachery of the very same religious Jewish leaders. To cover their shame, the Jews did not include them in the Masoretic text.
Catholics make a clear distinction between apocryphal books which are NO part of the divinely inspired Scriptures and are unauthenticated books and the 73 books of the Bible: 46 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New Testament. The Protestants removed 7 books and called them apocryphal yet they are not. JWs once more followed the Protestant trend and propaganda and used for decades the Anglican KING JAMES VERSION before coming up with their own NEW WORLD TRANSLATION in 1950. SEE SECTION ON “THE BIBLE”.
“Why do Catholics worship images while God hates idolatry?”
We don’t and the controversy was not invented by JWs. In the Bible, worshipping is to offer sacrifice. Catholics do not offer any sacrifices to images nor to saints. Offering flowers or bowing down in respect does not equate to worship and never will and any reasonable person understands that principle when it comes to offer flowers to a dignitary and do a reverence to the King or Queen of England for example… True Catholics are fully aware that an image of a Saint is not that Saint but a representation of him, the same as there were representations of Holy Angels in the Ancient tabernacle, Catholics show respect, honor or veneration to Saints and to the Virgin Mary but they ONLY WORSHIP GOD. This is a common misconception among Protestants, JWs and even Orthodox. The possession of an image of statue in Catholicism has nothing to do with the worship of images in paganism. SEE SECTIONS ON “THE VIRGIN MARY”, “SAINTS” and “ICONOCLASM & IDOLATRY”.
Also, the Catholic Church teaching is so deep that it is a marvel to dig into the treasures of the teachings left by Christ when he came on earth and also the jewels that He has given to many Saints throughout the Centuries. Baptized Catholics are priests by their baptism, not ministerial priests as ordained priests are, but priests by baptism. There are 2 types of priesthood: the common priesthood of the faithful, received through the Sacrament of Baptism, and the ministerial (or hierarchical) priesthood, received through the Sacrament of Holy Orders. That is why a laity person can offer the Divine Mercy Chaplet to God the Father and say: “Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your Dearly Beloved Son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.” That is the sacrifice that we offer to the Father. Catholics also participate in offering the very Sacrifice of Jesus at every mass, as the Catholic mass is the central act of Catholic worship, understood as the re-presentation of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary and prayer, making His Body and Blood truly present in the Eucharist(transubstantiation)for adoration, thanksgiving, atonement, and petition. It’s a sacramental offering, uniting heaven and earth, where the priest acts in persona Christi (in the person of Christ) to offer Jesus to God the Father, fulfilling the command “Do this in memory of me”. That is THE SACRIFICE THAT GOD WANTS, and certainly not the heretic propaganda of JW Arianism teachings spreading lies about the true Nature of God The Son and other blasphemies about The Immaculate Conception and Perpetual Virginity of The Holy Virgin Mary, under the cover of the expression “the sacrifice of the lips” JWs refer to when quoting Hebrews 13:15 to speak about their proselytizing activities. SEE SECTIONS ABOUT “THE MASS”, “ICONOCLASM & IDOLATRY” and “THE HOLY EUCHARIST”.
“Why do Catholics worship Saints and pray to them while God hates idolatry and that He prohibits us from speaking to the dead?”
Again, we don’t and the controversy was not invented by JWs. In the Bible, worshipping is to offer sacrifice. Catholics do not offer any sacrifices to images nor to saints. Offering flowers or bowing down in respect does not equate to worship and never will and any reasonable person understands that principle when it comes to offer flowers to a dignitary and do a reverence to the King or Queen of England for example… True Catholics are fully aware that an image of a Saint is not that Saint but a representation of him, the same as there were representations of Holy Angels in the Ancient tabernacle, Catholics show respect, honor or veneration to Saints and to the Virgin Mary but they ONLY WORSHIP GOD. This is a common misconception among Protestants, JWs and even Orthodox. SEE SECTIONS ON “THE VIRGIN MARY”, “SAINTS” and “ICONOCLASM & IDOLATRY”.
Also, Catholic believe in the Communion of Saints. The same as it is proper to ask for a brother to pray for us, as the SOULS of the Saints are in heaven or purgatory, they can also be asked to pray for us. On the other hand, the Catholic Church strictly forbids to speak to demons and damned souls or make any use of spiritistic practices, necromancy and divination. But asking a soul in heaven or purgatory to pray for us living on earth is right in the line of James 5: 16, 17 encouraging us to “pray for one another”. SEE ARTICLE: The Bible Supports Praying to the Saints https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-bible-supports-praying-to-the-saints
“Isn’t there a Catholic prayer that says that Jesus went to hell? Therefore, Hell is not a place of torments but just the resting place of all mankind when we die.”
I am ashamed to have used this argument in “field service” myself, having heard it from another experienced pioneer as myself had no first hand knowledge of the Catholic faith as I was born and raised a JW. What a shame!!! JWs, even if they are ex-Catholics have no idea of what they are talking about. Even many current Catholics are not capable of explaining this sentence.
First of all it is not a song, it is the CREDO, the confession of faith that all Catholics know by heart and should have studied point by point in their catechism and RCIA Initiation program before being receiving first communion and confirmation if they were baptized as babies. Adults converts systematically study the Credo before receiving all three sacraments.
The “Hell” it refers to where Jesus went is not the place where Satan and the demons are. It is clearly explained in the official Catechism Reference Book of the Catholic Church CCC 632-637. It is rather the place where all the patriarchs who had died prior to Jesus were waiting for their Savior. It is referred to as the “Bosom of Abraham” in Jesus’ parable. Jesus did not go there because he died as if to prove that he went to the Sheol as everyone else did according to JW propaganda and that therefore Hell does not exist according to them, implying fallaciously that Catholic authority perfectly knows and fools people and that “Hell” is just the common resting place of all humans passing away. Once more, this insinuation is the same Satan used with Eve implying that God knew something and was hiding the truth from her.
Catholics recite and confess that Jesus went to the place where all the patriarchs and dead people from the Old Testament were waiting. As Jesus had not come and the Redemptionhad not been paid yet, there was no way to Heaven or salvation. The door was closed. They had to wait somewhere, but no in hell with the demons! That place of waiting is the “Hell” where Jesus went to preach to those souls awaiting, including Adam and Eve.
So again, does a Catholic prayer say that “Jesus descended into hell” and does it mean that hell is not a place of torment if Jesus went there? Yes there is such a prayer and if is called the Credo and no, it does not mean that Jesus went there just because he died as wrongly assume the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Jesus went to the place where all the prophets and people who had died in the Old Testament were waiting to preach to them and empty the place and give them access to heaven. It is not the same as the “hell” defined as the place of eternal condemnation.
The official Catechism of the Catholic Church explains:
632 The frequent New Testament affirmations that Jesus was “raised from the dead” presuppose that the crucified one sojourned in the realm of the dead prior to his resurrection.477 This was the first meaning given in the apostolic preaching to Christ’s descent into hell: that Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead. But he descended there as Saviour, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there.478
633 Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, “hell” – Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek – because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God.479 Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into “Abraham’s bosom”:480 “It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Saviour in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell.”481 Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.482
634 “The gospel was preached even to the dead.”483 The descent into hell brings the Gospel message of salvation to complete fulfilment. This is the last phase of Jesus’ messianic mission, a phase which is condensed in time but vast in its real significance: the spread of Christ’s redemptive work to all men of all times and all places, for all who are saved have been made sharers in the redemption.
635 Christ went down into the depths of death so that “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”484 Jesus, “the Author of life”, by dying destroyed “him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and [delivered] all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.”485 Henceforth the risen Christ holds “the keys of Death and Hades”, so that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.”486
Today a great silence reigns on earth, a great silence and a great stillness. A great silence because the King is asleep. the earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. . . He has gone to search for Adam, our first father, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow Adam in his bonds and Eve, captive with him – He who is both their God and the son of Eve. . . “I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. . . I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead.”487
IN BRIEF
636 By the expression “He descended into hell”, the Apostles’ Creed confesses that Jesus did really die and through his death for us conquered death and the devil “who has the power of death” (⇒ Heb 2:14).
637 In his human soul united to his divine person, the dead Christ went down to the realm of the dead. He opened heaven’s gates for the just who had gone before him.”
SEE SECTION ON “HELL”
“Why do Catholics tolerate gross sins when obvious sinners keep taking the communion and pervert priests remain priests?”
The Catholic Church does not claim to control people’s lives as the organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses does. There is the sacrament of confession where if a repentant sinner confesses his sins, he is absolved by the power of the sacrament of the forgiveness of sins conferred to ordained priests by the apostolic succession and therefore the repentant sinner comes back in the state of grace and can take part of the holy communion. If a sinner is not repentant, lies during his confession, continues to practice sin and takes the communion without confessing with a contrite heart or without being in a state of grace, he will render account to God Himself and has no chance to enter heaven but condemns himself to hell. Priests do not play the role of spiritual policemen as Jehovah’s Witness “elders” do but bishops can forbid communion to outright so called Catholic who profess openly other beliefs such as politicians who push for the right of abortion. As for sins regarding the private lives of people, priests do not chase parishioners nor check their behavior nor verify one by one if all have confessed their sins before partaking of the communion. Each person can go confess to whatever priest he chooses, in that parish or in another therefore when a person comes for communion, no one can tell nor judge such a person nor know the state of their relationship with God. At the end of the day, it is between each individual and God and noone can nor will fool God and at our personal judgment when we die, one thing is sure for unrepentant sinners wo played a double life, “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” according to Hebrews 10 :31 and “make no mistake: God is not mocked, for a person will reap only what he sows” according to Galatians 6:7.
Also, according to the Vatican’s Pontifical Yearbook 2025, there were approximately 1.406 billion baptized Catholics in the world in 2023 versus only 8 million Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is much easier to cover and control the sins of 8 million people with a systematic delation and control system that does not exist in the Catholic Church. I have seen with my very own eyes even at Bethel and I suffered myself from abuse from people living a double life within the JWs’ organization: pedophiles, homosexuals, drunk elders, wife beaters, young people committing suicide… those facts are well covered up and not made public so throwing the stone at Catholics is plain dishonest, hypocrit or just an ignorant perspective. ““Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?” – Matthew 7:1-3.
“Why do Catholics get stuck on Jesus and worship him who is the door but never get passed him to get to the Father while Witnesses worship God the Father only? Like they have the key but they never use it to open the door to get to the Father “Jehovah”…”
Interestingly, this illustration I used it myself while preaching when I was a witness. Catholics worship God as the Holy Trinity, God the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit. For more information go to the section on “THE HOLY TRINITY”.
While the Orthodox Church may be more Holy Spirit centered, it is true that the Western Church has more of a tendency to be Christ centered. But this is for a reason. Yes, Jesus is the door. Yes, Jesus is the key. Without Him, there is no access to God the Father whatsoever. The Witnesses say they worship the Father Jehovah but actually they don’t as they do not offer Him the sacrifice He asks, which is not just “sacrifices of lips” in evangelizing but the sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist in the mass and the associated praises and prayers that His Divinity requires. Although they know it, JWs do not even offer the Our Father Prayer to God every day as for them this equates to repeating prayers… They do not offer God the prayers and praises He asks as in the Holy mass and devotions in imitation of the Holy Angels in the Scriptures. Witnesses do not speak to Jesus, do not worship Jesus, do not have a relationship to Jesus. Although they know all the stories from the gospels, they do not truly know Jesus as they do not spend time with Him in Worship of The Holy Sacrament, (they do not even know He is there in the Holy Eucharist in every Catholic Church waiting for them!!! I surely had no idea for 40 years!!!!!!), they do not eat Him and therefore Jesus does not live in them, they do not listen to Him by spending time with Him in prayer and having that “communion” with Him, “common-union”. Witnesses do not really know Jesus. Yet unfortunately without being ONE with Him, there is no access to the Father at all.
“Why do repeat sinners remain in the Catholic Church?”
Jesus taught Divine Mercy to Saint Faustina and many other saints and therefore as long as someone keeps going back to Him, the Church cannot deny them the sacraments. The Church does not condemn common people as the organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses does, it only does it on canonical grounds. Jesus knew Judas was stealing from the common purse yet He let him be part of the group hoping for a change of heart till the end. People condemn themselves by their actions before God and no one can fool Him. No human needs to police another. The Church offers all the sacraments necessary for penitence, repentance and salvation and will keep offering them for the salvation of all sinners.
Interestingly, JWs love criticizing the Catholic Church for tolerating sinners yet within the organization of the JWs all the way up to the World Headquarters, I have seen cases of pedophiles and have been myself victim of witnesses who were never excommunicated although being one a child abuser and the other a homosexual, I have seen cases where the organization preferred to pay the court not to release files of pedophiles known by their elders in the United States and cases of settlements with victims to obtain their silence. Most JWs believe that the organization is “clean” because they have never heard of such scandals that are very tightly controlled in most congregations while the reality is quite different. JWs headquarters policy is to refuse to release names and information of offenders and they claim the right to have confidentiality and secrecy although they actually do not have the sacrament of confession per say as they do not believe in the apostolic succession nor absolve anyone of their sins. They do conduct “judicial committees” where sinners must tell their sins and show repentance but those “judicial” proceedings have absolutely nothing to do at all with the sacrament of confession, it is at best a parody of it and claiming the right of secrecy on the same grounds of the Catholic Church without the actual sacrament is mind boggling. They copy the Catholic Church without any content whatsoever and they have the guts to point out the sins inside the Catholic Church while covering up theirs with tight rules and schemes, 8 million JWs are much easier to control and cover that 1,4 billion Catholics with the Catholic Church making public figures while the JWs never did. Matthew 7: 1-5 says: “Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”
FOR EXAMPLES OF CASES INSIDE JWS, SEE SECTION “JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES”.
“Why do Catholics in power have been persecuting Jehovah’s Witnesses?”
I was surprised to discover retrospectively how much of a victim mentality the JWs have, considering themselves as the only true Christians on earth and being persecuted by the entire world, especially by Catholics. I truly believed it too!!! I truly believed that all the smear campaign against the JWs in France in the 90s had been orchestrated by Catholics who hated JWs…
The true reality is quite shockingly different. Catholicism has been from the very First Century till today the most hated and persecuted religion in the world till this day. The JWs keep honoring their few thousand dead in their short 150 years of existence yet they are completely ignorant of the tens of thousands of martyrs the Catholics have had in 2000 years!!!
Also, a clear point from my perspective: in the Antique Israel, the Israelites made no concessions to the depraved Canaanites and their blasphemous and revolting practices. False worship was not tolerated.
JWs are a heretical sect promoting heresies against the very Nature and Divinity of Jesus God The Son Almighty and blasphemies against The Virgin Mother Mary, which is a reality that hurts me more everyday when I think of it and I am ashamed of having myself participated in these preaching campaigns as JW for 40 years, but I had no idea of what I was really doing against Jesus and Mother Mary. How would any virtuous virgin woman feel if behind her back people kept spreading rumors that she had had sexual relations and had children she never had? The Virgin Mary is very well alive, She is Our Queen, She is seeing and listening to us everyday and is very hurt by all these blasphemies spread against her Immaculate Conception, Her Perpetual Virginity and Her Motherhood as Mother of Jesus as God Incarnate. That is why we Catholics offer the first Saturdays of the month Devotion and prayers as an act or reparation for all the lies Protestants and JWs spread against her. Why do you expect a child to remain silent when some liar attacks the reputation of one’s own mother or father. Would you? So why do the JWs expect true Catholic leaders in government position to let them spread their lies with impunity? It would have never been the case in Ancient Israel and the JWs know it.
“Why did Catholics adopt pagan celebrations?”
Actually true Catholics don’t and we never will. The JWs mix a lot of concepts.
One – Not everyone baptized Catholic is truly a devoted true Catholic. There are many Catholics by birth or by name who say they are yet do not know not follow Catholic dogmas, teachings and truly approved Catholic practices. Any Catholic mixed up in spiritism, Vudu, shamanism, curanderos, brujería, santería, yoga, New Age practices and anything condemned in the Bible is not a true Catholic even if they pretend they are. The Catholic Church does not excommunicate people left and right as the JWs do, People are not watched not under surveillance and priests and bishops do not do judicial committees as JWs do. The Catholic Church has the sacrament of Confession when the person himself goes and accuses oneself of wrong doing and repents. If a person practices sin or participates in other condemned activities and beliefs, the priest will not make them confess nor force them nor excommunicate them as JWs do, the person by their actions is condemning themselves before God and if they die unrepentant the only judgment they will receive is hell.
Two – True Catholics do not celebrate Halloween nor any local practices related to some spirit, deity, false god or demon. Anyone who does or say otherwise is not really a Catholic with true knowledge of his faith nor are they in a state of grace.
Three – Birthdays are not prohibited in the Bible just because the 2 birthdays mentioned in the Bible were of pagans, Pharaoh and Herod as the JWs teach. That is a ludicrous argument. History, archeology and the Catholic Tradition show that the First Centuries Christians celebrated Jesus’ birthday. SEE SECTIONS ON “BIRTHDAYS”, CHRISTMAS”, “PAGANISM”.
Four – There are some inside the Catholic Church that are trying to reconcile some pagan practices under the false misplaced banner of “ecumenism”. No one is fooled and true Catholics are revolted and in an uproar when they see highly placed priests or even bishops approve such practices, True Catholics don’t. JWs have no knowledge of what is happening inside the Catholic Church which is the field in which was sown the good wheat yet the enemy came and sowed weeds, according to Jesus parable in Matthew chapter 13. Yet the master said to leave both grow till the time of the harvest. That is why among good Catholics today, Jesus has tolerated since the first century seeds of the devil and He is very aware of it and told the Christians of the congregation of Ephesus so in Revelation chapter 2: 1 – 7 : “I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance. I know that you cannot tolerate evildoers; you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them to be false.”
“Why did Catholics adopt the doctrine of the immortality of the soul from Greek philosophy and Plato?”
They didn’t. JWs preach the heresy that the soul is life and that there is no soul that goes anywhere after death. That is not the reality of how God Himself created man. Catholics did not adopt the belief of a soul from Plato nor from any other Greek philosopher. The soul exists and has always existed from the creation of the very first man well before Plato! Even Jews believed in the soul. The body was not created with a soul as JWs say Catholic teach. That is not the proper way to describe what the soul is nor the truth about what the Catholic Church teaches, The body does not have a soul. At the beginning God created human beings composed of a body AND of a soul. These two intrinsically united characteristics are what the person is and were INSEPERABLE in the Garden of Eden. We are in-souled bodies . The soul and the body were one and were never separated. Note that what God breathed into the nostrils of man in Genesis 2:7 was not the soul but His Holy Spirit. When Adam and Eve died the punishment was the separation of the body from the soul, before that they were different but never separated, The matter and non matter, the physical and metaphysical got separated at the original sin but originally they were one, inseparable. After sin until now, at death the body goes back to the ground and decomposes until it is resurrected at the End of Times to be reunited to its soul, some for a resurrection of the righteous or of the unrighteous, i.e. some to rejoin their soul in heaven and others in hell. In Ecclesiastes 9 : 10 that the JWs love to quote to prove that we all go to the tomb and there is nothing after death, it says “Anything you can turn your hand to, do with what power you have; for there will be no work, no planning, no knowledge, no wisdom in Sheol where you are going.”
What the text is saying that there is no longer any works that can be done after death to be saved. At death each person faces their personal judgment, for hell, purgatory or directly to heaven and in hell or purgatory, there is nothing a person can do to gain merit. Jesus explains it very clearly to Saint Faustina, on earth it is the only time where one can gain merit for his salvation. Jesus told Saint Faustina: “But child, you are not yet in your homeland; so go, fortified by My grace, and fight for My kingdom in human souls; fight as a king’s child would; and remember that the days of your exile will pass quickly, and with them the possibility of earning merit for heaven. I expect from you, My child, a great number of souls who will glorify My mercy for all eternity (1489).”
SEE SECTIONS ON “SOUL”, “HELL”, “PURGATORY”, HEAVEN”, “SAINTS – SAINT CATHERINE EMMERICH”, “SAINT FAUSTINA”.
“Why do Catholics repeats prayers as if they were mantras on and on without any feelings, while Jesus clearly said: “And in praying do not heap up empty phrases (“vain repetitions” in KJV) as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words”, in His Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6 : 7?”
That is a common misconception based on the poor practice of some unfortunately poorly educated Catholics or born Catholics that do things more out of tradition and routine and not faith. True Catholics do not pray as if they were rattling off words with a machine gun. This poor and regrettable practice among many Catholics has been clearly condemned by the Virgin Mary herself in several apparitions to Saints, including at Fatima and Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort is also very clear on the subject. SEE SECTIONS ON “MARY” and “THE ROSARY”.
True devout Catholics understand their faith and the importance to pray with the heart and never fall into a meaningless routine (see conferences and interview videos of Father Winston, Father Joseph Iannuzzi, Father Chris Alar and exorcists are extremely clear on the matter.)
On the other hand, Protestants and JWs think that regardless how it is prayed, the Rosary is exactly what Jesus said not to do. Wrong. The story and origin of the Rosary is fascinated.
One – The Rosary is completely biblical, word for word.
Two – The Rosary was invented as laity and working 3rd order monks wanted to accompany the daily reciting of the 150 Psalms cloistered monks did everyday but either they could not read nor had the time nor had access to a Bible in the Middle Age so the Psalms were substituted by 150 Our Father or Hail Mary by those who wanted to also offer up prayers to God. With time it became the rosary we know today. So the Rosary is a way to offer God glory and praise in a simpler way for people who cannot offer up the 150 Psalms. Therefore it is never to be recited automatically without feelings or without thinking but rather it should be done with the original purpose of being united in the praise given to God in Monasteries and Convents, and in Heavens by the Seraphim who call “Holy Holy Holy” in Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4, which shows that repeating words is not wrong when praising God, Holy Angels do it.
Three – Many Saints and Mother the Holy Virgin Mary herself in many apparitions stressed the importance to meditate each mystery first and / or read the Scripture first. Pope Saint John Paul II had a marvelous way to read one sentence of the Bible Mystery between each Hail Mary while offering up his personal rosary.
Four – The Rosary has been one of the most efficacious way to teach in remote lands and previous centuries when no books were available. SEE SECTION ON THE “ROSARY”
Five – The Rosary is not only agreeable but also has been specifically requested by Jesus and Mother Mary in many apparitions to Saints.
Six – All Catholics exorcists are clear on the matter: prayers repeated mechanically are not efficacious and even demons have expressed annoyance and shouted “With the heart!!!” when an exorcist said the Father Prayer mechanically. SEE FATHER WINSTON’S INTERVIEW under section “SPIRITUAL WARFARE”.
Seven – I have personally been amazed at the impact of repeating prayers from the heart and offering to God daily the Holy Rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet. Back then when I was a devout JW, I had not concept of meditating on any mystery of any sort. Study yes. Bible reading plenty. I calculated that in 40 years of being a devout JW since birth who never missed a meeting nor an assembly and who served at the World Headquarters for 9 years, I have read the Bible cover to cover personally or as part of my meeting preparation and attendance close to 20 times. The Gospels I knew them and still can quote Scriptures by chapter and verses. Yet I had never meditated intently for hours as I do now on the cross, on the agony, on the birth of Jesus…, on every single mystery as they are presented in the Rosary. The depth of the Rosary is incommensurable and no wonder that the Virgen Mary herself asked for us to pray the Rosary in Fatima and in many other apparitions.
Eight – Also repeating decades of the phrase “For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.” in the Divine Mercy Chaplet has had a profound impact on me. The first months I started to pray that rosary every day I was amazed at what I was saying to God and I realized how proud I had been all my life and how humble and unworthy the Catholic Church was teaching me to become to receive mercy from God and to keep asking for it. The Latin mass has had the same effect on me. Pondering over the prayers and their meaning and some are repeated several times is a true cleansing of the heart. As Hebrews 4 : 12 says: “Indeed, the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.” Repeating prayers from God’s Word from the heart, pondering over every word is powerful, not to mention again that the Rosary was invented so that laity and working monks could participate in some simple way to the offering of praises and prayers to God as they could not be chanting the 150 Psalms with the other cloistered monks of the 1st order, something no JW has ever done nor has any concept of doing anyway. It is a whole other level of spirituality, Not head knowledge. From the heart to heaven. At least the Rosary is a humble manner to offer to God what we can do in a little way in lieu of the 150 Psalms and the Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline and the Office of Readings that consecrated people and priests offer to God every single day and in lieu of all the neverending beautiful praises that Seraphim sing constantly to God over and over again!! God deserves so much praise!!!!
“How come the Jehovah’s Witnesses were the only ones to suffer in concentration camps as a religion?”
The Jehovah’s witnesses truly believe that they are the most persecuted religion on earth. There is nothing more false. They dismiss the thousands and thousands of Catholic martyrs around the world and across the ages from the 1st Century on who have died for their faith till this day. The First Century Christians and all the ones who died in the first three centuries under Roman persecutions were not Jehovah’s witnesses. It is an outrageous claim. They were practicing Catholics celebrating the mass and taking the communion of the Holy Eucharist and their number is unknown. Deleting the martyrdom of all those Catholic Saints murdered all around the world in 20 centuries and choosing to pretend that they never existed or preferring to ignore them – while their very names adorn our streets and public buildings all over Europe – only to magnify the 250-300 witnesses who did courageously die in Nazi concentration camps is dishonest and betrays a great ignorance of world History. All their memories should be honored whatever the creed. As for the position of the Church during the Second World War, a few names as Saint Maximilian Kolbe and Blessed Clemens August von Galen, the bishop called “The Lion of Münster” show the true position of courageous Catholics. The difference is that the Catholic Church is not managed as a dictatorship with mandates where when the top says something, everybody must comply from the top down or else… someone may “lose their privilege” or be “disfellowshipped” or “reproved”… The Catholic Church does not work this way. There is not micromanagement of individuals’ lives in the Catholic church.
Also some First Century Christians were soldiers and politicians and therefore the Catholic Church does not hold the same view on absolute neutrality as the Jehovah’s witnesses. The truth is that as a whole, Jehovah’s witnesses have no knowledge of the thousands and thousands of stories of courageous Catholic martyrs. I had no idea myself for 40 years as one born and raised as JW. SEE SECTIONS ON “SAINTS”, “HISTORY”, “NEUTRALITY & JUST WARS”.
“If the term “adelphoi” means blood brother from the same mother, clearly in Matthew 12 v 47 did not Jesus have fleshly brothers?”
No, the word “adelphoi” also appears in 1 Corinthians 15 v 6: clearly Jesus did not have 500 fleshly brothers nor would the Virgin Mary nor any other woman on earth have ever given birth to 500 sons. It is ludicrous and the most fallacious argument that appeared in the JWs’ Reasoning book and I am ashamed of having used it from “door to door”. SEE SECTION ON “JESUS’ BROTHERS”.
“Didn’t the Catholic persecute Luther, Calvin and John Wycliffe because they wanted to translate the Bible into vernacular languages and the Catholic clergy wanted to keep the common people in spiritual darkness?”
No. That is a gross lie from the Black Legend that the witnesses have adopted thoroughly as the more than 40 000 Protestant denominations. Witnesses only believe what their publications say of these 3 men. Witnesses never actually do any historical research to know the factual details of who these men were, what they believed and how they truly ended.
The truth is that JWs hold these men as “saints” and consider them as pre-JW true witnesses that had fought for the truth against the Catholic Church during what they consider the “dark ages”, (while in the Catholic Church some of the greatest Saints and doctors of the Church had visions, apparitions and mystical revelations as Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) or Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591) during those exact times, in response to the attacks from inside and outside the Church – Martin Luther (1483-1546) took 10 millions out with his heresies in 1517 but 14 years later in 1531 The Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego and brought 13 Millions in), while themselves (the JWs) claim not to be part of any Protestant movement… This shows the hypocrisy of the JW position. SEE SECTION ON “PROTESTANTS” for more on the real motivations and biographies of Calvin, Luther and Wycliffe.
The Church did not want people to start interpreting the Bible each one according to its own whim, which is exactly what these 3 men opened the door to: more than 40 000 Protestant denominations and other sects, each one with a founder who declared himself illuminated by God to interpret as he wanted the Holy Scriptures, throwing away the Magisterium, the authority of the Pope and the apostolic succession as well as the Catholic Tradition with its Fathers of the Church and thousands of Saints who have continued to shed more light on the revealed truth throughout the centuries.
SEE SECTION ON “THE PROTESTANTS” AND ARTICLE “The Myth of Protestant Bible Martyrs”
“Are not all the teachings of the Jehovah’s witnesses proven in the Bible?”
So I thought as well for 40 years as a zealous pioneer and bethelite. I was surprised to discover with my research how much I believed out of pure credulity. Some doctrines are based on wrongly interpreted scriptures taken out of context or on manipulated original language and all the rest is actually pure personal understanding and interpretation from the Governing Body members without any Biblical proof nor backing whatsoever. Once the faith in the inspiration of the Governing Body vanishes, one realizes how much what one thought as solid faith was just hanging on belief in mere men.
“Why do Catholics believe that the Virgin Mary remained a virgin while she obviously had other sons as Jesus had “brothers” according to the Scriptures?”
The JWs believe that the term brother means blood son of the same mother according to their understanding of the Greek term “adelphoi” which appears in Matthew when talking about “his brothers”. Yet I was never told that it is the same term “adelphoi” which also appears in 1 Corinthians 15:6 where we read that Jesus appeared to 500 “adelphoi”… clearly Mary nor any other woman in History for that matter ever gave birth to 500 sons. This argument is therefore fallacious and outrageous. But beyond bickering over Greek words – which JWs do love doing, although none or very few of them actually ever studied Ancient Greek and they just repeat what the JW publications say as I myself did for decades (interestingly I did study Latin for 3 years back in school but not Greek and I never read the Bible neither in Latin nor in Greek and it never even occurred to me to check if the word “adelphoi” appeared somewhere else in the Bible so I repeated that argument out of sheer trust in the authors of the JW publications) -, the real question that we should ask ourselves is the following: “Does anyone actually care about the reputation and the feelings of the Virgin Mary instead of quarreling over words?” Now She is My Mother who has adopted me so generously and so very graciously despite my ignorant past spreading blasphemies against Her as a zealous witness, I am ever so conscious (to my shame) of the hurt and damage done to Her and to Her Holy Reputation in the world by people who do not even know Her nor care about HER really. That is now why I am offering up acts of reparation every first Saturday of the month, according to the approved apparitions of Mother Mary and of Jesus in Pontevedra on December 10th 1925 asking for reparation. Jesus Himself exposed the hurt done to His Mother!!! Would anyone tolerate that some people – more full of themselves than worried about the actual truth – spread false rumors against one’s own mother? Absolutely not!! The Virgin Mary is very well alive! She is here. She sees us. She listens to us. She hears every insult, lie, swear word, false teaching, stubborn witnesses with their bible in hand misleading people from door to door!!! How would you feel if someone spread the rumor in the town where you lived that your own mother, who gave birth to you and who strived her entire life to be the most virtuous and holiest woman ever, had had sex with so and so while she had not, and had had other children apart from you that she never had?? Would not that hurt you as much as it hurt her? Well that is the sad reality of the misinformation that has been going on for centuries against the Holy Virgin Mary and the faithful Catholics are the only ones left to uphold the dogmas of Her Divine Motherhood, Perpetual Virginity and Immaculate Conception (even the Orthodox only share the first 2 but do not believe in the latter). Some sully the reputation of Our Holy Virgin Mary out of sheer ignorance as I did, others attack her deliberately. Why don’t JWs ask themselves if they are truly ok in their conscience tarnishing the reputation of the holiest woman who ever walked on this earth and who made her entire life incredible sacrifices to uphold the Holiness to which She was called for yet had Her entire liberty to act according to Her Free Will the same as Eve had in the Garden of Eden, yet this time this incredibly courageous and holy woman always obeyed and did the Will of God “without ever counting the cost, nor even once”!!! (Quote from Father Chad Ripperger) SEE SECTIONS ON “THE VIRGIN MARY”, “THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION”, “JESUS’ BROTHERS”.
“The Cross is a pagan symbol that Catholics adopted from Ancient Babylon and Egypt and Jesus did not die on the cross as according to the Greek word used in the Bible, it refers to a simple pole.”
JWs love getting caught up into debates about original Greek words. But unfortunately the reality and truth regarding how Christ died and the instrument of His death are not even a serious debate anymore for anyone who does some serious archeological research and study about the Roman tortures. Do your research. SEE SECTION ON “THE CROSS”.
This being set aside, the outstanding truth that I have discovered that wiped away for me any further doubt is that the Cross is actually the very mark that we must bear on our foreheads to be saved!!!
The Cross is the very sign of our salvation. It is not some pagan symbol that the Catholics borrowed from Babylonians or Egyptians as JWs claim.
The prophecy of Ezekiel chapter 9 reads: “1 Then he shouted loudly for me to hear, ‘The scourges of the city are approaching, each carrying his weapon of destruction!’ 2 Immediately six men advanced from the upper north gate, each holding a deadly weapon. Among them was a man dressed in linen, with a scribe’s ink-horn in his belt. They came in and halted in front of the bronze altar. 3 The glory of the God of Israel rose from above the winged creature where it had been, towards the threshold of the Temple. He called to the man dressed in linen with a scribe’s ink-horn in his belt 4 and Yahweh said to him, ‘Go all through the city, all through Jerusalem, and mark a cross on the foreheads of all who grieve and lament over all the loathsome practices in it.’ 5 I heard him say to the others, ‘Follow him through the city and strike. Not one glance of pity; show no mercy; 6 old men, young men, girls, children, women, kill and exterminate them all. But do not touch anyone with a cross on his forehead. Begin at my sanctuary.’ So they began with the old men who were in the Temple. 7 He said to them, ‘Defile the Temple; fill the courts with corpses; then go out!’ They went out and hacked their way through the city. 8 While they were hacking them down, I was left alone; I fell on my face, crying out, ‘Ah, Lord Yahweh, are you going to annihilate all that is left of Israel by venting your fury on Jerusalem?’ 9 He said, ‘The guilt of the House of Israel and Judah is immense; the country is full of bloodshed, the city full of perversity, for they say, “Yahweh has abandoned the country, Yahweh cannot see.” 10 Then, I too shall neither give one glance of pity nor show any mercy. I shall repay them for what they have done.’ 11 The man dressed in linen with the scribe’s ink-horn in his belt then came back and made his report, ‘I have carried out your orders.’ “ https://www.catholic.org/bible/book.php?id=33&bible_chapter=9
The cross was the symbol of Jesus’ crucifixion. It redeemed us from sin and death and the cross becomes the mark of our salvation. Historically, there is ample evidence that Jesus died on a cross and not on a single pole as JWs claim. Do your research. Don’t get caught up in some empty debate resulting from a couple of dissident marginalized critics and remote historical exceptions. Also study the Shoud of Turin. Jesus died on a cross. SEE SECTIONS ON “THE CROSS” AND “THE SHROUD OF TURIN”.
In Ezekiel chapter 9 verses 3 to 4, the prophet talks about a man clothed with linen who had the writer”s ink-horn in his belt and he had to go in the midst of the city, in the midst of Jerusalem, and put mark, a sign, upon the foreheads of the men who sighed and mourned for all the abominations that were done in the midst of the city and anyone who did not have the mark would be killed . In the original Hebrew text, the word for “mark” is TAW and in the Hebrew alphabet this letter is the letter T. In the ancient Hebrew language which is slightly different from modern Hebrew, it wasn’t just the letter t. The letter TAW that the scribe with the ink-horn had to write on the forehead of people for them to be saved was actually a cross: the horizontal bar was lower. It was a cross, as a sign announcing the crucifixion and the need to have faith in the sacrifice of our Redemptor Jesus Christ!! Furthermore, it also means “alliance or pact”!!!
Also this letter TAW in Hebrew is written with two characters תָּ֜ו. The first one is a cross and the second character actually represents a man, a male human being or it can also represent a nail, as a nail used to set up a tent or a nail to nail a man on a cross during an execution!!
That is the mark that is to be written on the forehead of every person that is to be saved!! This discovery for me was amazing!!! MUST SEE: THE CROSS – The Cross: Jewish or Pagan? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9FazkvsNtA
Also the cross, the shape of the cross as in 3 perpendicular lines crossing each other is actually the foundation of the universe: theologians talk about the “cosmic cross”. If we analyze the world, the universe, most solid trusctures are actually based upon some form in the shape of a cross, every house, every door post, is actually built using two perpendicular beams or boards or planks or wooden pieces that will actually make the structure stronger… any piece of furniture, a bed, a chair, a cabinet, a cupboard, a fence, all of those are actually built with elements forming crosses because it’s actually the most solid shape or form in the universe. Light, stars, the sun, all shine with rays whose light is reflected in the form of a cross. Everything in the universe is based on a cross and therefore it is absolutely ludicrous to say, as Jehovah’s Witnesses claim, that the Catholics adopted the cross from some Egyptian or Babylonian pagan teaching or practice. The cross existed way before any civilization. It existed when God created the universe. Pagans didn’t invent the cross. The Catholic cross doesn’t come from pagan god nor civilization. God had purposed the cross to be the foundation of our salvation itself: it is the principle of the “cosmic cross”. SEE SECTION ON “THE CROSS”.
“The Catholic Church is the Most reprehensible part of Babylon the Great, the Harlot in Revelation, the world empire of false religion and it will be destroyed at Armageddon.”
The JWs demonize the Catholic and depict it in the worst terms imaginable. They describes it as being full of sorceries and demonic practices. I myself being born and raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, I remember always passing before churches with contempt and disdain, as it being the symbol of false religion, and I was careful never to set foot in a church per se, apart from the Abbaye of Mont Saint Michel for pure tourism when I was young, until December 2021 when I attended the concert of a soprano friend of mine. When I entered that church my heart was beating like crazy and I started to sweat thinking that I was committing the worst offense against God and would be worthy of being stricken down, and I prayed internally and I asked God to make clear to me what His Will was and if it was not pleasing to Him that I shall enter, I would leave immediately. I felt a voice saying to me “Stay” and a great peace came over me and I remained the whole concert in peace and amazed to discover the decoration of the place, a beautiful pontifical basilica.
I remember that when I was a child, I was with a group visiting a French town and as we passed by a church, some went in and I followed hesitating and smelling the incense and seeing the darkness of the place my first reaction was disgust and repulsion and I immediately left. That is the vision that I was given of Catholic churches since my birth. I lived in Paris, yet I have never been to the Cathedral of Notre Dame although I only lived 10mn away, not even out of curiosity. The way the JWs depict the Catholic Church is so negative and demeaning that I would have never EVER considered studying or joining the Catholic faith if it had not been by the pure grace of God. For children like me born and raised as JWs, although I have always considered myself as an educated person who went to public school and later University, actually I had no concept whatsoever of what THE EUCHARIST was. I had no notion whatsoever that Jesus Christ was here waiting for us in the Holy Sacrament of the Altar. I had heard how the other JWs sarcastically compared the communion as cannibalism as the bread was the bloody fleshly body of Christ and that Catholics were literally eating human flesh and that was ridiculous. I was always taught that the words of Jesus at the Last Supper were to be taken symbolically. My concept of what the Eucharist was and means was null apart from those caricatural stereotypes that Catholics were eating the body of Christ as if eating human flesh as some cannibals with blood drooling from their mouths. I had no notion whatsoever of the elevated truth that the communion is consuming Jesus himself so that we become Eucharistic Souls, we enter Christ’s Divinity, we become ONE and He feeds us eternal life into our souls and Christ comes to live IN us and we become temples of Christ: He lives in us, we become ONE. Not as in when we eat bread, our body assimilates the bread rather the contrary, Jesus makes us enter into His Divine dimension and He cures us as He penetrates all the inward parts of our body and soul and we become united as ONE. This is the greatest treasure of all mankind. That is the Greatest Gift done to Mankind by God after the Sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. I am flabbergasted at the virulence of the JWs condemnation against the Catholic Church which is the ONLY CHURCH that Jesus Christ instituted when He came to the earth. The explanation of Christianity from a JWs’ standpoint is a thin varnish, a parody, of the true plan that God has set up for our salvation. JWs have not idea of what the Catholic Church teaches and when a JW says that he knows because he used to be Catholic, that person has a very shallow concept of his previous faith that he actually never studied seriously and never believed or he would have never left Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.
Kingdom Halls of JWs are squeaky clean empty places with a stage, a pulpit, a microphone, chairs, and a sound system. There is nothing else to it. JWs, born and raised like me or even ex-Catholic have no knowledge of the true teachings of the Catholic faith, and they happily dismiss and condemn it alluding to some popes’ or pedophile priests’ scandals and lies from the Protestant Black Legend. They have no knowledge, the same as I did not, of the treasure buried under mounts of trash, lies and bad conduct from the weeds that the devil has sowed among the good wheat inside the church but that, for some reason, Jesus said to “let grow together and not uproot” until His Judgment when He comes back.
Preaching that the Catholic Church is pagan and demonic is a blaspheme against God The Father Himself who purposed the Church for our salvation, against God The Son who came down and became incarnate as human to graft us into His Sonship and as His Body the Holy Church brings us back to the Father as Sons and Daughters of God, and against God The Holy Spirit who lives in the Church and who imparts Its gifts through the Church and its sacraments.
Honest hearted JWs as I have known many, should carefully consider Jesus’ warning in Matthew 12:31 when the Pharisees were attributing His miracles to Beelzebub, the Chief of demons. Jesus then said to be careful, as there is one sin that cannot be forgiven, it is the sin against the Holy Spirit. Qualifying the very action and temple of the Holy Spirit on earth as demonic and rejecting God’s offer of salvation and grace through the only channel that God has instituted on earth, His Holy Church, moved and inhabited by the Holy Spirit, what a folly!
SEE SECTION ON “THE HOLY EUCHARIST”
“We are the true religion because we have a clean organization and we do not have scandals as in the Catholic Church. If one person commits grave sin and is not repentant or his sin tarnished the reputation of the organization, he is disfellowshipped. As Jesus said: “We must be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.” God did not tolerate immorality within the people of Israel nor does He tolerate it today therefore the Catholic Church cannot be God’s people in the view of all the scandals that have tarnished its reputation throughout the centuries from dirty popes like the Borgias’ scandals to pedophiles priests, corruption in finances, homosexuals in seminaries: everybody knows how corrupt the Catholic Church is, has been and will be. It cannot be God’s people.”
The Jehovah’s Witnesses claim to be God’s people because of the “purity” of their organization. The truth is far from their claim.
First of all one must be aware of the difference in size which drastically changes the perspective. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a group of 8 million people. Catholics are 1.3-1.4 billion people. Nothing alike. We will all agree that in comparison, by just a sheer volume of people, we are bound to find many more cases of corruption within the Catholic church because it is composed of more people and logically scandals end up being splashed all over the news just because of the proportion and exposure.
Also, the truth is that in the rather small organization that are the Jehovah’s Witnesses, there are many scandals that are carefully concealed from the Jehovah’s Witnesses themselves. I myself probably would have not believed half of it if I had not lived it and seen it with my own eyes. I was born and raised in a Jehovah’s Witness family, victim of abuse by my own father, which was covered up by my own mother, who in 2019, 10 years after calling me crazy for bringing up the matter, asked me for forgiveness and told me how sorry she was for never having protected me. She asked for forgiveness and confessed. After a traumatizing childhood, running away from an abusive environment at home, I ended up marrying a minister with very important responsibilities at the world headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses in New York who – I discovered too late – was a homosexual undercover who married me to cover his double life and who ended up dying of an autoimmune disease at the age of 47.
While I lived at the NY Bethel branch- the world headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses in New York – I got to know and hear first hand about a Bethel elder, who had problems with drinking at Bethel and lost his elder statis but was not “kicked outbof Bethel” to ise their jargon… I knew another bethel elder abusive to his wife whom I knew personally, other bethelites committing immorality and adultery inside of Bethel, I heard of vulgar bethelites telling dirty stories…
While I was at Bethel, my own hair dresser was disfellowshipped for having committed adultery with another bethelite while her husband was away on a foreign assignment.
I witnessed with my own eyes a police car being parked in front of the reception at the Wallkill facility in New York and the next day in all the NY news media being announced that a Bethel Elder with some 30 years at the world headquarters and also being an elder in my own Spanish congregation had been arrested for pedophilia. He had been followed by the police for 6 years before being arrested. The police found in his bethel room boxes full of pictures and videos of abuse on minors in different airports; the police had been tracking him for 6 years in all his travels to Chicago and to the Dominican Republic and he was finally arrested at the Wallkill bethel site of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. He was later sentenced and deported to Mexico for felony.
I was also the witness of first-hand accounts of suicide at Bethel, one of which funeral was held in my kingdom hall under great confidentiality and the other being open news as the young Asian bethelite had thrown himself under a train in upstate NY after being disfellowshipped for committing fornication with a married bethelite. He was kicked out of bethel and his own family did not receive him so he committed suicide. This story got well known of many, as that young bethelite had played the violin in the Family Night program a few months before.
The sad truth is that the witnesses have kept secret and have refused to disclose the names of abusers and pedophiles to the justice system for years. They have preferred to pay millions of dollars of penalties and many times they have settled cases under confidential clauses with the victims paying them huge amounts of money so that these scandals would not become public.
So it is not that the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ organization is cleaner than the Catholic Church, on the contrary: it does not disclose and keeps covering up the scandals that plague the reality of many witnesses.
I have had a JW close friend who told me personally of her own story: she had been abused by her grandfather who was an elder all his life and her own mother and grandmother did not believe her.
I have known another witness who was victim of rape and when later depressed and messed up by the trauma, she fell into utter depression and alcoholism, although being a witness, she was abandoned and shunned by her family as bad company and died alone. She was found dead, three days after her death, stiff behind the entrance door of her house. I have personally known a great friend whose husband had another woman and even another child and when she brought up the case to the elders she was told to be patient and to let the Holy Spirit work in her life: they would not believe her accusation until years later when the existence of this child was made manifest to all and they had to recognize the truth of her account. By the time they recognized what she had gone through, she had lost all her hair, had thyroid problems and huge emotional sequels… I knew another friend in Mexico who came to cry at my house telling me how her husband would disappear for 3 days and no one would not know where he was and there’s nothing the elders would do for her but to tell her to endure while in their law an unfaithful husband should be reproved and disfellowshipped. On speaking assignments with my husband I got to go to many other congregations and got to hear of cases of brothers and sisters having been married several times within the same circuit, marrying and divorcing and remarrying and playing the game so well that they all managed never to be disfellowshipped! Scandals, there are many, but they are well covered up and as Witnesses believe that any report that would tarnish their reputation is necessarily false or from ill intentioned apostate, they automatically dismiss such accounts as false and forged.
Another reality that I have seen is that many witnesses have had the syndrome of the “American Dream”. When I was a child, the main buildings of the World Headquarters were in Brooklyn, New York, right across Manhattan, right next to the Brooklyn Bridge, and it was like a pride to see the big sign “Watchtower” tower over New York City. Witnesses from other countries – I experienced it myself – had an enormous enchantment and excited admiration of seeing the world headquarters in the richest capital of the world… that too was a mirage and a great illusion…
Despite the harshness of the experiences and betrayals I have personally gone through in my life, I am so grateful to have seen it all and by the grace of God survived it all, because if I had not, I am not sure that I would have been able to come from under that overwhelmingly impressive perfect reputation that the Jehovah’s Witnesses have crafted throughout the past 150 years. That illusion of perfection is so well crafted that you almost have to see the scandals from within and from the top to believe them. I am so grateful to have gone through what I went through to be able to come under that puff of smoke, the falsehood, that beautiful varnish that the witnesses have created over the years. Thank God nowadays, through the digital world wide web and internet system, it is much easier to find Court reports of what truly happened starting from the true life character and court cases of the very founder Charles Taze Russell to more recent cases of abuse, from the United States to Australia; there is nothing covered that would not come to light sooner or later… SEE LINKS IN SECTION “JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES”
Also regarding purity, the Jehovah’s Witnesses do have the vision of a clean and pure organization with very strict morals and truly well-educated Jehovah’s Witnesses with well-behaved children who work hard in school. JWs tend to be trustworthy, good employees who pay their taxes, respectful citizens of the law, (at least that is what they encourage their followers to be in their Watchtowers and what they report being described as by many government officials around the world).
Their world headquarters and any national headquarters are extremely well maintained, perfectly painted and well kept. Where I worked at Bethel in NY was probably the cleanest place I have ever seen.
There is a constant care for perfection, and they will often quote the scripture where Jesus said: “You must be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect.” The comprehension of this scripture by Jehovah’s Witnesses tends to prone a sort of squeaky clean perfectionism that is reflected in their perfect attire, three piece suits, jacket and tie and polished shoes at every meeting, perfect skirts under the knee for all women (which rule was apparently recently changed by for possible pants for women), impeccable Bethel facilities all around the world…
Yet if we carefully reread the scripture in Matthew chapter 5 verses 43 to 48, Jesus did not refer to a squeaky clean appearance nor perfectionist scrupulosity. In the context, Jesus was just talking about loving our neighbors, loving those who persecute us and he was comparing it to the actions of God the Father who is in heaven, “who makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good”. He was highlighting the necessity to love our neighbors, love our enemies, and those who do not salute us, the Gentiles…” and therefore he concluded by saying that we “should be perfect as God is perfect.”
The entire context referred to practicing the same kind of love as God does. The term “perfect” here in Greek is “tellios” which means “whole, fully grown, final, complete” and therefore the exhortation to be perfect means to fully and completely emulate the qualities and virtues essential to a Christian Life that Jesus himself displayed when he was on Earth as he perfectly reflected the love of his father. The love of Jesus was not some kind of Pharisaic perfection tending to follow all the rules to a T and leaving Godly love behind. In the scriptures Jesus put in clear contrast the love of his Father for sinners with the very hypocrite observance and false righteousness of the Pharisees.
For example, the Pharisees would wash their hands up to their elbows whereas Jesus disciples would not.
The Pharisees would follow the Sabbath to the extreme minute exception and rule; Jesus had no problem having his disciples take some wheat grains from the fields to eat them, or sending a paralytic to pick up his cot after being healed. Jesus did not promote the strict observance of the law above love. Jesus ate with prostitutes and tax collectors. He himself said that he had not been sent for the healthy but for the sick. Jesus mingled and ate with sinners. True JWs never eat with outsiders or “worldly people” as they called them my whole life (until they started to take that expression out of their jargon a little after I left Bethel as being considered too demeaning and discriminatory). Jesus was not among the squeaky clean of his time. I have noticed that the Catholic Church welcomes everyone for real, whatever the appearance, whereas in the Kingdom Halls of Jehovah’s Witnesses, within a month of studying the Bible with them, any Bible student will understand clearly that a certain dress code must be implemented straight away if they are to attend their meetings with dignity. I am a firm defender of dignified attire for entering God’s presence in the best possible outfit as He is God Almighty, the Sovereign Lord of the Universe but if some people do not understand it yet, for some reason, the Catholic Church does not put up such drastic requirements as JWs but some simple decent instructions, for example at the entrance of the Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, nothing like the detailed dos and don’ts that I was taught in Watchtower pictures for 40 years. Do I like” squeaky clean”? Personally yes I do!!! But I have learned in the Catholic Church that love is not in the dress nor in your appearance nor in the perfectly squeaky clean shininess of a place only, it is in the actions, it is in the open door, it is in the easy access to God the Son in the Eucharist given to all human beings on earth. THAT is being perfect as God the Father is perfect, as “He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust”.
For some reason the JWs put more emphasis on dressing up properly at their kingdom halls and from door to door, on painting and keeping all their facilities top notch, pronouncing the name Jehovah left and right, but they have no problem whatsoever and they keep insisting on spreading the IV century arianist heretical blasphemy that Jesus was a created angel, they have no issue dirtying the reputation of the purest and holiest virgin woman who ever lived by insisting that Our Most Holy Virgin Mary had sexual relations and gave birth to other sons and they see nothing to it when preaching the IV century Pneumatomachianism blasphemous heresy that the Holy Spirit is just a force!!! Without mentioning their systematic protocol consisting in hiding under the carpet of their shallow perfect facade thousands of appalling scandals that would shock the world if their organization was the size of the Catholic Church.
Another detail that has struck me: outside of every single Catholic church I got to go the past 3 years, there has been systematically some kind of beggar asking for money whereas in 40 years of being a witness, in at least 7 countries and 16 different congregations I have belonged to and hundreds of Kingdom Halls I have visited, I have personally never seen a beggar outside any kingdom hall asking for money. Ever. That is my personal experience. It says a lot…
Jesus Christ taught and is still showing us as the Head of His Holy Church a different type of love from what we usually conceive. He had picked 12 Apostles: 2 of them were traitors and the other 9 ended up being cowards so much so that when Jesus died of a horrible humiliating death, only the faithful John stood at the foot of the cross with only 4 women including the Virgin Mary. But when He was resurrected, Jesus went to gather the same apostles (except Judas Iscariote who had hanged himself) and confirmed the foundation of the Church with the same imperfect men who overcame their weaknesses and proved their faithfulness till dying a martyr’s death. Jesus knew Judas was a thief all along and at the Last Supper he was perfectly aware that it was that apostle who was going to betray and he urged him: ” What you are about to do, do quickly.” Yet, Jesus just let him be. He did not do anything to prevent him for the time being.
In Revelations chapter 2, Jesus says to the Church of Ephesus: ““I know your works, your labor, and your endurance, and that you cannot tolerate the wicked; you have tested those who call themselves apostles but are not, and discovered that they are impostors. Moreover, you have endurance and have suffered for my name, and you have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: you have lost the love you had at first.”
Therefore Jesus is clearly aware of scandals, hypocrisies inside His very Church and for some reason He permits it all and lets it happen. But He does draw the attention to us that it is not a good enough reason for us faithful ones to lose our first love.
Also in Matthew chapter 13, Jesus “proposed another parable to them. “The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds* all through the wheat, and then went off. When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well. The slaves of the householder came to him and said, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ His slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ He replied, ‘No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest;* then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, “First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn.”’” “
In Matthew 18, speaking about the setting up of his kingdom on earth, Jesus said: “Anyone who welcomes one little child like this in my name welcomes me. But anyone who is the downfall [“stumbling blocks” or “scandals” in other versions] of one of these little ones who have faith in me would be better drowned in the depths of the sea with a great millstone round his neck. Alas for the world that there should be such causes of falling! Causes of falling indeed there must be, but alas for anyone who provides them!”
Everything is right there. Jesus said there would be scandals, false apostles and weeds inside His Holy Church. But He is not leaving nor abandoning His Church.
Neither do I. Neither will I.
“The Trinity is a pagan teaching that Catholics adopted from Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations.”
The Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that the Trinity was adopted from Babylonian and Egyptian triads. They adopted new XIX century ideas contested by arqueological finds such as the idea that Semiramis was the wife of Nimrod and mother of a child-god (often identified with Tammuz or Marduk), as presented by Alexander Hislop in his 19th-century book The Two Babylons. They also teach and happily give “Bible tours” at the MET Museum of NY and at the Bristish Museum of London, to show that the Trinity concept came from Egyptian triads such as Osiris, Isis, and Horus.
Unfortunately the truth is far from those fanciful speaculations and goes much deeper than that. Their claim attacks the very nature, the very essence of who God is and always has been, He who lives outside of time, who has been for all eternity, way before creating any creature or creation. Babylonian and Egyptian triads had not been invented yet, but God had always been for all time and for all eternity. Who He explains He is in the Holy Scriptures has nothing to do with some pagan teaching. God was, is and eternally will be a trinity, way before mankind ever existed. The Holy Trinity has always existed outside of time.
God is Love so He is a Triune God, One God in Three Persons, and We have a whole Divine Family waiting for us in Heaven in which we can be grafted in and united to already, even right here on Earth!!!
Rediscovering the nature, the essence, the very definition of what and who God is, is absolutely amazing!!! Understanding that God is a Holy Trinity, Three Persons in one God, one and only God, one only Divinity, one Essence in Three Persons: God The Father, God The Son and God The Holy Spirit.
To define God, we have to go back to 1st John chapter 4 verse 8: “God is love”.
But how do you define love when God is infinite and we humans as so limited to grasp the deep things of God?
Well, how would you define a table to an extraterrestrial being from another system? A text with a definition might do. A picture even better… How about cooking? We would need to show a person with some food doing some action of cutting, mixing, pouring, heating, stiring… We do agree that showing a picture of a person with a tomato in the hand would not do. We would also need to show the action of actually cutting or peeling or manipulating the tomato to convey the concept of cooking. It therefore must have 3 components: a person, some food, and the action of cooking…
Well love is also an action, love is a action verb. Not just a feeling as movies would have us believe. It is a verb. To define love, we first need a lover, a person who loves, who generates love, who gives love, and that person is God the Father.
We also need a recipient, a beloved, another person who receives love, that person is God The Son.
And because love is an action, it is an action verb, we need something to be done between them two, an action, a verb, love is embracing, giving, forgiving, gifting, protecting, caring, kissing, taking care of, feeding, providing, sacrificing, listening to, watching over, looking after, waiting, stroking, hugging, cuddling, covering, sheltering… it’s a verb and this verb is so powerful that it takes on its own identity with a will and an intellect, and as a rational individuality this person is God the Holy Spirit who is Charity, who is Love in action Itself. SEE SECTION ON “THE HOLY TRINITY”.
In the account of the Creation in Genesis 1:27 The Holy Trinity appears for the first time as God speaks in the first personal subject pronoun of the plural form, “Let us make man in Our Image”. Who was God speaking to in such a plural form? The Three Persons cooperated as One Concert of Love in This Divine Work of Creation.
This Triad, this Trio, those Three Persons, from the very same and unique Divine nature and essence, live as One God. They are co-eternal, they always existed, not one came before another as God lives outside of time, He created time for humans but He Himself is not subjected to time. They are co-equal and consubstantial of the same substance, the same Essence, the same God, one Divinity in three persons. They share the same Divine Nature or Essence. They are distinct persons, yet possess one inseparable, undivided Divine Substance.
To exemplify what God is in our little human minds and brains that are too limited to understand what the Holy Trinity is, God has tried to explain to us who He is using concepts that the human mind can grasp yet The Most Holy Trinity still remains a Mystery as God is infinite and cannot be contained nor understood by a limited mind.
The Holy Spirit has given us to understand that in the Holy Baptism we received the three theological virtues: Faith, Hope and Charity. Each one gifted by a Person of the Holy Trinity. Faith from The Father. Hope from the Son. Charity from the Holy Spirit.
In the Confiteor prayer, when we confess our sins we pray the following: “I confess to Almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do”, the thoughts being related to The Father, the words because God The Son is the Verb, The Word, The Logos, and in works relating to God The Holy Spirit in action in our lives that we offend by our wrongdoings or by our omissions of good actions or lack of action when we fail to act upon His promptings.
Also, The Holy Trinity acts in our lives through the three sacraments of Christian Initiation. The first Sacrament of Baptism makes us Sons of God of God the Father by adoption within the Son. Through the Sacrament of the Holy Communion we receive God The Son in the Holy Eucharist. In the Sacrament of the Confirmation we receive a personal downpour of God’s Holy Spirit.
The Triune God is LOVE; God The Father is the Source of Love, God The Son is the Incarnate Love and God The Holy Spirit is the Love being Poured out upon us.
God the Father is connected directly to our will and therefore we need to conform our will to the Will of God. As the Holy Mother of God The Son, the Will of God must become our own will, “Fiat Mihi Segundun Verbum Tuum” said the Virgin Mary to the Arcangel Gabriel relating to Her the Message of God. “Fiat Voluntas Tua” said Jesus Himself to His Father when He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. Our will must come to be what God The Father wills, our intellect relates to God The Son and all memory to God The Holy Spirit. These are the 3 highest faculties of our Human Soul, perfectly compatible and formatted to be configured according to God in His Three Persons.
The Holy Trinity therefore consists of a Divine Family to which we are all called and predestined to belong to. God called all of us, every single human being, to become part of his Divine Family. Not all humans will respond to the call as every human has free will but all of us were called to be Sons and Daughters of God to enter into the Divine Family and to be adopted as Sons and Daughters of God.
The Athanasian Creed (Quicunque vult) is a statement of Christian doctrine traditionally ascribed to Saint Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, who lived in the 4th century. It was designed to overcome Arianism.
“Whoever wishes to be saved must, above all, keep the Catholic faith. For unless a person keeps this faith whole and entire, he will undoubtedly be lost forever. And the Catholic faith is this: we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity. Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, another of the Holy Spirit. But the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have one divinity, equal glory, and coeternal majesty. What the Father is, the Son is, and the Holy Spirit is. The Father is uncreated, the Son is uncreated, and the Holy Spirit is uncreated. The Father is boundless, the Son is boundless, and the Holy Spirit is boundless. The Father is eternal, the Son is eternal, and the Holy Spirit is eternal. Nevertheless, there are not three eternal beings, but one eternal being. So there are not three uncreated beings, nor three boundless beings, but one uncreated being and one boundless being. Likewise, the Father is omnipotent, the Son is omnipotent, the Holy Spirit is omnipotent. Yet there are not three omnipotent beings, but one omnipotent being. Thus the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. However, there are not three gods, but one God. The Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, and the Holy Spirit is Lord. However, there are not three lords, but one Lord. For as we are obliged by Christian truth to acknowledge every Person singly to be God and Lord, so too are we forbidden by the Catholic religion to say that there are three Gods or Lords. The Father was not made, nor created, nor generated by anyone. The Son is not made, nor created, but begotten by the Father alone. The Holy Spirit is not made, nor created, nor generated, but proceeds from the Father and the Son. There is, then, one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three sons; one Holy Spirit, not three holy spirits. In this Trinity, there is nothing before or after, nothing greater or less. The entire three Persons are coeternal and coequal with one another. So that in all things, as is has been said above, the Unity is to be worshiped in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity. He, therefore, who wishes to be saved, must believe thus about the Trinity. It is also necessary for eternal salvation that he believes steadfastly in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thus the right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is both God and man. As God, He was begotten of the substance of the Father before time; as man, He was born in time of the substance of His Mother. He is perfect God; and He is perfect man, with a rational soul and human flesh. He is equal to the Father in His divinity, but inferior to the Father in His humanity. Although He is God and man, He is not two, but one Christ. And He is one, not because His divinity was changed into flesh, but because His humanity was assumed unto God. He is one, not by a mingling of substances, but by unity of person. As a rational soul and flesh are one man: so God and man are one Christ. He died for our salvation, descended into Hell, and rose from the dead on the third day. He ascended into Heaven, sits at the right hand of God the Father almighty. From there He shall come to judge the living and the dead. At His coming, all men are to arise with their own bodies; and they are to give an account of their own deeds. Those who have done good deeds will go into eternal life; those who have done evil will go into the everlasting fire. This is the Catholic faith, which except a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved. Amen. “
“Easter is a pagan feast and the Easter eggs are symbols of fertility and they were adopted by the Catholic Church from pagan worship to the goddess of sex and fertility Astarte or Ashtoreth, who gave her name to “Easter” and whose statutes can be seen in the greatest museums of the world as in the MET in NY, the belly full of eggs.”
The truth about the origin of the Easter eggs is very far from this made up lie. No, they have nothing to do with the goddess of fertility Astarte or Ashtoreth as JWs claim. For centuries during Lent, Catholics, (therefore literally entire populations of entire countries in Europe before the Reformation), would fast for the entire 40 days prior to the Celebration of the “Memorial of Christ’s Death” as JWs call it, or prior to the Holy Week and its Triduum:
Holy Thursday (Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper): Commemorates the Institution of the Eucharist and the washing of the feet or “Last Supper”,
Good Friday (Celebration of the Passion of the Lord): A solemn day of fasting, prayer, and veneration of the cross, marking Jesus’s death.
Holy Saturday / Easter Vigil: The pinnacle of the Triduum, held after sundown on Saturday to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus.
During the fast (only one meal a day originally), Catholics would practice abstinence of any meat or animal product, including dairy products and eggs for the entire Lent. Therefore on the last day, it was a custom to offer to each other decorated and painted eggs as on Resurrection Sunday, they would be allowed to be eaten again after 40 days of abstinence.
MUST READ: Diez cosas interesantes sobre la vigilia pascual – ORIGEN HUEVOS DE CHOCOLATE DE PASCUA
“Through the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, we can learn how Lent was practiced in his own time and attempt to willingly observe such practices in our own lives. The Lenten fast as mentioned by St. Thomas Aquinas constituted of the following:
Monday through Saturday were days of fasting. The meal was taken at mid-day and a collation was allowed at night, except on days of the black fast
All meat or animal products were prohibited throughout Lent.
Abstinence from these foods remained even on Sundays of Lent, though fasting was not practiced on Sundays.[1]
No food was to be eaten at all on either Ash Wednesday or Good Friday
Holy Week was a more intense fast that consisted only of bread, salt, water, and herbs.
The Lenten fast included fasting from all lacticinia (Latin for milk products) which included butter, cheese, eggs, and animal products. From this tradition, Easter Eggs were introduced, and therefore the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday is when pancakes are traditionally eaten to use leftover lacticinia. And similarly, Fat Tuesday is known as Carnival, coming from the Latin words carne levare – literally the farewell to meat. These were mentioned in the “Forgotten Customs of Septuagesima” article in more detail.”
MUST READ: Easter Is Not a Secretly Pagan Holiday
‘Easter’ as a translation of the pagan goddess ‘Ishtar’ has no basis in reality.
“It’s common for skeptics of Christianity (including Jws) to claim that the word Easter comes from the name of a pagan deity called Ishtar, suggesting that the Christian faith has pagan roots. But no matter how prevalent this contention has become, it has no basis in history or reality.
In Jeremiah 44:15-17, the people of Judah reject the prophet Jeremiah’s message in preference to their idolatrous worship of an entity called “the queen of heaven”—apparently the pagan deity Ishtar. Commentators seem to be in general agreement that Jeremiah’s “queen of heaven” is Astaroth or Ashtaroth—Astarte in the Septuagint, which is the Greek Old Testament. Literally, Astaroth means “the moon.” The moon was a Sidonian idol worshipped by the Phoenicians and worshipped as Ishtar by the Assyrians, Egyptians, and Babylonians. In nature worship, the sun and the moon were considered the king and queen, respectively, of the celestial heavens.
Some people have inferred that Easter is the English derivation of the Greek Astarte, but there is no linguistic or historical basis for this. In addition, the English word Easter is said to have derived from an Anglo-Saxon pagan goddess named Eostre. This theory was based on an incorrect conclusion by St. Bede the Venerable about the etymological origins of the English month that coincides with spring and the celebration of Easter, Eosturmonath. But, as Anthony McRoy, a fellow of the British Society for Middle East Studies, notes, there is no historical basis for this derivation. He notes that St. Bede himself said his conclusion was based on his interpretation rather than a generally held position or proven fact.
Also, there is no doubt that the focus of Easter for St. Bede and English Christians in general, was and is Jesus, the Passover Lamb who died on our behalf and rose from the dead.
Indeed, in most European countries, the name for Easter derives from the Greek word Pascha, which itself is derived from the Hebrew Pesach—i.e., the word Passover. Thus, the term paschal sacrifice refers to Jesus’ one sacrifice, and paschal candle is another name for the Easter candle.
So where did the English get their word for the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection? McRoy notes there are two main theories, both of which are plausible:
One theory for the origin of the name is that the Latin phrase in albis (“in white”), which Christians used in reference to Easter week, found its way into Old High German as eostarum, or “dawn.” The other is that Eosturmonath simply meant “the month of opening,” which is comparable to the meaning of “April” in Latin. The names of both the Saxon and Latin months (which are calendrically similar) were related to spring, the season when the buds open.
In either case, the claim that the English celebration is rooted in pagan goddess worship simply has no historical basis, even if some anti-Catholic polemicists have gotten a good deal of mileage out of it.”
The teaching that the Holy Spirit is a force and not a person was likewise an invention of other heretical Catholics from the IV Century, called neumatomachi or Pneumatomachians, The term comes from Greek, meaning “fighters against the Spirit”. They were also called after the heretical Catholic Bishop of Constantinolple Macedonius and their group came be known as the Macedonians. Pneumatomachianism or the Macedonian heresy was condemned at the Concile of Constantinople in 381AD. JWs did not invent anything nor did they have any new light coming from God. They are just recycling old heresies from heretical priests from the IV Century.
The Holy Spirit is a person, it’s not an impersonal force. It is The Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity.
In theology a person is an individual substance of a rational nature and so the Holy Spirit is a person, it is of the same essence of God The Father and of God The Son, it is the same Divine Essence, the same Divinity therefore it is God but it has its own intellect and will.
A careful study of the Holy Scriptures perfectly shows that the Holy Spirit speaks, the Holy Spirit says, the Holy Spirit prevented Paul from going to Asia (Acts 16: 6), the Holy Spirit moves into action, the Holy Spirit is saddened…. the Holy Spirit is quoted in dozens of texts in specific action cleary proving that He is a rational person with an intellect.
A person is a substance with a will and an intellect with a rational nature is the same difference between a human person and an animal: we would never say that an animal is a person because, although it has some instinct and even feelings,it doesn’t has an intellect nor a rationality and neither an intelligent will. An animal doesn’t reflect upon itself. Most animals don’t even know that they are their own entity: a cat may mistake his own image for another cat in the mirror they don’t have this intellectual concept of their individuality, they don’t have a will, they don’t plan the future as we do, they don’t worry, they don’t study, they don’t rationalize as we do that’s why we do not consider animals as “persons”.
Yes they do have a body therefore having a body doesn’t define a person, having an intellect and a will does.
Likewise, angels are persons. Every single angel is an individual person.
Also God is one God ,only one Divine Essence, only one Divine Nature, it’s not three Gods, there is ONLY ONE GOD but in three persons:
God The Father, God The Son and God The Holy Spirit do have their own individualities within the Holy Trinity and this Divine Holy Family forms the Family we are called to belong to, to be Sons and Daughters of the Holy Trinity. They become hosts of our souls and we are to receive the Holy Trinity inside the temple of our body, blood soul and humanity. Inside each of our own human inner personal universe, we are to receive the Holy Trinity as a guest into our souls.
We get to pray for the Holy Spirit to come, to enlighten us, to guide us, to impart to us His 7 gifts as recorded in Isaiah 11:1 -3. The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are, according to the Catholic Tradition: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of God. Starting to develop a personal relationship with God The Holy Spirit adds a whole other dimension in our relationship with God!!!
In Catholic theology, a person is fundamentally an individual substance of a rational nature, defined by intelligence, will, distinctiveness, and self-subsistence (incommunicability), meaning they are complete in themselves but called to communion with others. This definition applies analogously to God (the Trinity), angels, and humans, but for humans, personhood also involves being a body-soul composite, uniquely reflecting God’s image through intellect and love in relationship, and possessing inherent dignity from conception.
Core Characteristics
Individual Substance: A complete, self-existing entity, not a part of something else.
Rational Nature: Possesses intellect and will, enabling knowledge and love, distinguishing persons from animals or inanimate objects.
Incommunicability: Each person is unique and distinct, unable to be completely merged into another.
Openness to Others: While distinct, persons are made for communion, not isolation, finding fulfillment in relationships, especially with God.
