THE GEMS OF FAITH I HAD NO IDEA ABOUT FOR 40 YEARS AS A JW…
Jesus is right here in the Holy Eucharist!!!
For more than 40 years I lived on the planet Earth ignoring, not knowing at all that Jesus Christ was right here on Earth, in every single piece of Eucharist, in every single Catholic Church, in every single Tabernacle of Catholic Churches and Chapels all around the world. Jesus is not just seating at the right hand of God the Father Almighty in Heaven, far away in Heaven… He’s right here!!!!
THE GREATEST GIFT MADE TO HUMANITY, THE TREASURE OF ALL MANKIND HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT, THE GREATEST INVENTION OF ALL TIME: JESUS CHRIST THE VERB THE LOGOS THE SECOND PERSON OF THE HOLY TRINITY ON EARTH IN THE FORM OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST!!!!
Jesus had promised in Matthew 28:19 and 20: “And I will be with you all the days until the conclusion of the system of things” and He did keep His promise. He went to Heaven and He came back in the form of consacred hosts: every time a Catholic priest pronounces the blessing on the bread and the wine, the bread becomes the flesh and body of Christ and the wine His Blood, both are the Living God Jesus Christ. Not only He is here, not only can wH go and see him, spend time with Him, worship Him in the Exposition of the Holy Sacrament of the Altar but also every Catholic who is baptized and who has received the Sacrament of the First Holy Communion can actually RECEIVE Jesus Christ in the Holy consecrated host and consume Him and become ONE with Him and welcome Him in the house of his soul!!! We eat Him, we drink Him, we consume Him and we become ONE with Him, we become Eucharistic Souls!!! And Jesus is not just sitting in a tabernacle as consacrated hosts, He also becomes part of us as we partake of the Holy Communion. He becomes ONE with us, we consume Him and we enter inside his Divinity: we become ONE with Him and we can take Him home with us in our hearts as He dwells inside of us. He becomes ONE with us. We are ONE!!! We become ONE!!! The Apostle Paul says in Galatians 2:20: “It’s no longer I who lives but Jesus who lives in me.” For 40 years I had no knowledge, no concept whatsoever, of the fact that Jesus was on Earth and that I could become so intrinsically and intimately united with Him!!! It is a whole other dimesion of spirituality!!!
Jesus is here!!! Jesus is here on Earth!!! Jesus is right here!!!
If someone was telling me that Jesus was here, on Earth, in flesh and blood, in Times Square, at the Eiffel Tower, or at the Plaza del Sol in Madrid, I would be the first one to run and go see Him, to touch Him, to hug Him, to listen to Him, to ask Him question, to beg Him to heal me, to explain my life to Him that He already knows but stil to talk to Him and pour out my heart to Him, to heal my broken heart, to bless me, to hug me…! But wait… HE IS HERE!! We can go and see Him and spead time with Him in every single Catholic Church with a tabernacle where the Holy Consacred Host resides!!! GOD IS HERE!! That is mind-boggling!!
I would be like Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, mesmerized, drinking His words, listening to Him, speaking to Him, asking Him all the burning questions I have in my head, talking to Him, asking Him the millions of questions I’ve have my whole life, asking for a blessing, asking Him to talk to me, to explain to me my life, to guide me, to give me counsel, to bless me, to forgive me, to put His hand on my head, to heal me, to heal my body, to heal my heart, to heal my painful years, to heal my broken heart….!!! My dream was always to be at the feet of Jesus as Mary had been and I absolutely always loved that story in the Gospel but as a Jehovah’s Witness I had no hope of ever seeing Jesus because if you are not of the 144,000 you’ll never go to Heaven and according to the Jehovah’s Witnesses you’ll never see Jesus in person, you’ll be on earth in a paradise far from Him… No!! No!!! No!!!!!
As a Catholic, I now know that Jesus gives to all of us THE GREATEST GIFT OF ALL MANKIND, THE BIGGEST TREASURE OF ALL HUMANITY HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT: HIMSELF, GOD HIMSELF, GOD THE SECOND PERSON OF THE HOLY TRINITY, THE LOGOS, THE VERB, JESUS CHRIST ON EARTH IN EVERY SINGLE CONSACRED HOST , IN EVERY PIECE OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST, IN EVERY CORNER OF THE EARTH.
He is here!!! He is here!!! He is here!!!! He lives in every consacrated host and as we partake of the Holy Communion He lives in us, inside of us, He comes home with us, He sleeps in our hearts with us, He goes through everything we go through, He accompanies us in our trials, in our tears, in our hopes, in our dreams, He lives with us, He experiences what we experience, He accompanies us, He carries our crosses for us, He lives inside of us… We are never alone!!! He lives in us, He lives with us, He’s here. He is the biggest treasure of all humankind hidden in plain sight, the greatest gift of God to humanity: Jesus Christ, Our God Lord and King, present in every piece of Holy Eucharist on the planet Earth.
Anytime you see in a church a red candle, He is there inside the tabernacle or in the monstrance in the Exposition of the Holy Sacrament of The Altar: that is the Divine Holy True Presence. Stay with Him. Accompany Him. Bathe in His Divinity and in the rays of his Holy Presence and grace that invades the entire church, you will never be the same and the more you are in His presence, the more you realize how much He heals you, how being with Him is like already having a foot in Heaven, and how much you need Him and what a privilege it is to be able to have a private audience with Your King and God every day of your life!!! Since August 2023, I spend minimum 2 hours evry day in worship of the Holy Sacrament during the week and on weekends I easily spend 4 to 7 hours, even 11 hours sometimes, (or entire nights in a 24/7 chapel we have in Madrid) there is no better place on the planet to be at!!!
So the next time you think: “if only I could speak to Jesus…. if only Jesus was here… if only I could see Jesus I would…”, here is the greatest good news that every single human soul must know:
“BUT HE IS HERE!!! RIGHT HERE!!! YOU CAN GO AND SEE HIM EVERY SINGLE DAY OF YOUR LIFE!!! HE HAS BEEN WAITING FOR YOU!! COME AND SEE!!!”
We have a mother!!! I have a mother!!! We all have a loving mother!!! The Most Holy Blessed Virgin Mary is a Mother to us all!!! Jesus Himself gave Her to us as a Mother.
I didn’t know!!! I didn’t know until January 2022 when I realized, listening to father Schmidt, that when Jesus died on the cross and he told Saint John: “This is your mother” and he told Mary: “Woman, this is your son”, he was giving his mother to all of us, to all mankind!!! And me little orphan like girl coming from where I come from, from the heartache of the childhood that I went through – that I explained in my biography (SEE “ABOUT” SECTION), I have yearned my entire life to be loved by a mother and now I do I have a mother: Mother Mary, the Virgin Mary!!! She is here for all of us!!!
God has resolved the impossible existential conundrum of the orphans: God is the Father of all of us, all of us whatever the circumstances, orphans with living parents who ignore us, who do not know how to love us, who hated us, who abused us, who hurt us, who harmed us, voluntarily or involuntarily, knowingly or unknowingly, for whatever the reason, or people who had parents who died, or who never knew their parents, or were given up for adoption, or were simply abandoned, all of us, at some point in life whatever our background, we need loving parents. So God has resolved this issue: He is our Father, we do have a father Papa the Father that we pray in Our Father prayer “Our Father who art in the heavens”, “Abba Father”, we have a Father, all of us without distinction, we have a Father who loves us and who is waiting for us to be part of his loving family and who wants to adopt us by the adoption of the Catholic baptism. By the Catholic holy Sacrament of baptism we become children of God, Sons and Daughters of God the Father Almighty by adoption in Jesus Christ and we have a mother. We have a mother!!! God has sent us the holy Virgin Mary as a mother to every single human on the planet: there is no longer a human that is without a mother: we have a mother; her name is Mary. Her very name comes from “Amor”, “Amour”, “Love”, She is love itself. She came to adopt us as her children.
HERE MY FAVORITE EXPLANATION OF THE ETYMOLOGY OF THE NAME “MARY, MARIA”:
“In 1906 Zorrell advanced another explanation of the name Mary, based on its derivation from the Egyptian mer or mar, to love, and the Hebrew Divine name Yarn or Yahweh (Zeitschrift fur katholische Theologie, 1906, pp. 356 sqq.). Thus explained the name denotes “one loving Yahweh” or “one beloved by Yahweh”.”
Encyclopedia: “Mary, The Blessed Virgin” (External link)
We have a mother!!! We have a loving mother!!!
SEE SECTIONS “THE VIRGIN MARY”, “ABOUT”, “SAINTS”
FR. MIKE SMITH – ASCENSION PRESENTS: MOTHER MARY, SAINTS, WORSHIP?
VIDEO: Do Catholics Worship Saints?
VIDEO: Why Catholics Call Mary Their Mother
Our Ultimate Calling is to be divinized, to be grafted, inserted into God’s Holy Divine Family, The Holy Trinity, to possess God, to become participants to God’s Divinity by grace and to be reunited to God in Heaven.
Our Calling on this Earth is to love God and to be inserted into the Divine Family, to be part of His Divine Family, to participate with God to His Divinity, to “become God by participation”, to be participant to His Divinity, not by nature but by grace. We were created to possess God and to live off of Him and to live off of the three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity. We were created at the image of God so much so that we are designed to be formatted and conformed to receive God, to become temple of God and to welcome Him as the Host of Our Souls so that we become dwellings of God: The Holy Trinity comes to live in us and reside in us and dwell in us. Saint Catherine Siena wrote: “The soul is in God and God in the soul, just as the fish is in the sea and the sea in the fish.”
God has loved the world so much that He wants to share with us everything He has, He wants to insert us, to graft us, to welcome us inside his Holy Family and He wants us to be His children as part of His Divine Holy Family God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Spiritin the Holy Trinity.
He wants us to be His Children. The Father sent His Son to the Earth so that gathered in the arms of the Holy Spirit He would bring all of His Children back to Heaven to live with Him as part of his Divine Family.
SEE SECTIONS “GOD IN MY LIFE”, SAINT TERESA OF AVILA”, SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS”
SEE ARTICLE “What “So that We Might Become God” Means” – (External link)
SEE CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH CCC460: The Word became flesh to make us “partakers of the divine nature”: “For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.” “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” “The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods” (CCC 460).
The Holy Spirit is a person, it’s not a force, it’s a person. 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.
SEE SECTION ON “THE HOLY TRINITY” AND ARTICLES “DEFINITION OF A PERSON” – (External link)
SEE ARTICLES “The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit – What are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, and why do they matter? (External link)” AND Wikipedia: “Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit”(External link)
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: Winsdom, 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!!!
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 infinte 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.
NOTE: Father Iannuzzi explains that “God the Father was operating in Adam and Eve’s wills and He was also sustaining their heart beats, the center of the human being’s body. God The Son was operating in the intellect of Adam and Eve continuously through infused knowledge and He was also sustaining and maintaining their life blood, the same life blood that He would shed in atonement for their sin. The Holy Spirit was operating in the memory of Adam and Eve as well as in their breath, their exhalation and inhalation. The “Ruach”, the wind, the “breath of God”, “Ruach Yahve”, entered the nostril of Adam to give him divine life. The Spirit was breathing in and out of Adam’s lung with divine breath and divine life force and in the memory too. WATCH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw28h1CQwkA&t=
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.
ILLUSTRATION: The same as the human hand has five fingers, when we are created we are called to be part of a family with persons who take care of us whatever the circumstances that we may have on Earth.
– As the middle finger God The Father is the Central Person,
– God Our Father, as the middle finger of our hand has God the Son “at his right hand”, the index represents God The Son who points out to The Father: he came to the Earth to teach us about The Father. to show us The Father, to take us back to The Father and to bring us back to The Father. Jesus Christ is the index,
– God the Holy Spirit could be symbolized by what we interestingly call in English “the ring finger”; it is the finger where we put the ring of a married person. It is appropriate as God the Holy Spirit is the very person who literally married or espoused the Holy Virgin Mary to put the seed of God into her womb so that God the Son would be born as God Incarnate, as a human being and we, humans, are also called to receive God the Holy Spirit into our souls as it cleanses our entire being at our Baptism. We also receive Him contained in the Holy Communion and we receive Him personally too in the Holy Sacrament of the Confirmation.
– Therefore right next to the ring finger is the little finger: it is shorter than the others but it is still the closest to the Holy Trinity and that is Our Mother the Holy Virgin Mary, who is the closest being next to the Holy Trinity, above all angels, being Herself Queen of Angels. The little finger is actually right next to the ring finger because God the Holy Spirit is Her Spouse: The Holy Virgin Mary was literally impregnated by the Holy Spirit who put the seed of God into Mary’s womb to beget the Son of God Incarnate, God The Son in flesh, The Incarnate Word of God Jesus Christ and so Mother, The Holy Mother of God the Virgin Mary, is that fourth finger that is shorter than the other three, but the closest to them.
– And finally we have a fifth finger which is the thumb. The thumb seems to be separate from the others, it doesn’t even reach the height of the others, it is very mobile and that finger represents our Guardian Angel: it is of the Heavenly Realm. It is not human, it’s part of the hand because it does work and acts in presence of God the Holy Trinity but it is very mobile because it actually accompanies us here below on Earth since our conception all the way throughout our lives until our personal judgment. He is with us every single day of our lives. The thumb shows us the way. murmurs into our ears what we should or should not do, constantly reminds us of the right path and guides us. And therefore we pray: “Angel of God, my guardian dear, To whom God’s love commits me here, Ever this day (or night) be at my side, To light, to guard, to rule, and guide. From sinful stain O keep me free, And at death’s hour, my helper be. Amen”. He will try to put us on the right path to bring us back to the Holy Trinity, to show us the way to go home: that is our Guardian Angel.
Therefore every single one of us, every single human being, we actually live right in the palm of God’s hand, in the palm of a Divine Family watching over us, in the middle of a Heavenly cradle. This is when God closes His Hand and we are safe under the protection of God the Father, God The Son, God the Holy Spirit, with also The Holy Virgin Mary, Our Lady Terror of Demons, Virgen Potens, Most Powerful Virgin and with the constant care of our Guardian Angel, whoever we are, whatever our circumstances here on Earth, social background, with a human family or without a human family. We are never alone, we have a family!!!!
We have God The Father God The Son God The Holy Spirit and Mother Mary and our Guardian Angel. every single one of us!!! We have a family and we are all taken care of!!!!
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. “
The Cross is the very mark 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.’ “ – (External link)
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?
Also the cross, the shape of the cross as in 2 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”.