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2 Corinthians 4:18 "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen [are] temporal; but the things which are not seen [are] eternal."

So many times, we are told not to look to the things of earth which pass away. The earth, and everything in it, will pass away. Even the earth itself, is of a temporary nature. This again, is speaking of the flesh and the spirit. The flesh represents all that you can see with the physical eye. The spirit is not seen with the physical eye. The spirit is the hope of mankind. Faith is spirit. We have faith that all that God promised, He will do.

Pursuing God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the souls of men should consume the believer.

IS WORSIP OF MARY BIBLICAL?

First veneration is a synonym of Worship, so no matter what kind of word games Catholics like to play, anything the Catholics say that they don’t—they do.

The Bible is absolutely clear that we are to worship God alone. The only instances of anyone other than God receiving worship in the Bible are false gods, which are Satan and his demons. All followers of the Lord God refuse worship. Peter and the apostles refused to be worshiped (Acts 10:25–26; 14:13–14). The holy angels refuse to be worshiped (Revelation 19:10; 22:9). The response is always the same, “Worship God!”

Roman Catholics attempt to “bypass” these clear Scriptural principles by claiming they do not “worship” Mary, but rather that they only “venerate” Mary. Using a different word does not change the essence of what is being done. A definition of “venerate” is “to regard with respect or reverence.” Nowhere in the Bible are we told to revere anyone but God alone. There is nothing wrong with respecting those faithful Christians who have gone before us (see Hebrews chapter 11). There is nothing wrong with honoring Mary as the earthly mother of Jesus. The Bible describes Mary as “highly favored” by God (Luke 1:28). At the same time, there is no instruction in the Bible to revere those who have gone to heaven. We are to follow their example, yes, but worship, revere, or venerate, no!

When forced to admit that they do, in fact, worship Mary, Catholics will claim that they worship God through her, by praising the wonderful creation that God has made. Mary, in their minds, is the most beautiful and wonderful creation of God, and by praising her, they are praising her Creator. For Catholics, this is analogous to directing praise to an artist by praising his sculpture or painting. The problem with this is that God explicitly commands against worshiping Him through created things. We are not to bow down and worship the form of anything in heaven above or earth below (Exodus 20:4–5). Romans 1:25 could not be more clear: “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.” Yes, God has created wonderful and amazing things. Yes, Mary was a godly woman who is worthy of our respect. No, we absolutely are not to worship God “vicariously” by praising things (or people) He has created. Doing so is blatant idolatry.

The major way Catholics “venerate” Mary is by praying to her. But prayer to anyone other than God alone is anti-biblical. Whether Mary is prayed to, or whether she is petitioned for their prayers—neither practice is biblical. Prayer is an act of worship. When we pray to God, we are admitting that we need His help. Directing our prayers to anyone other than God is robbing God of the glory that is His alone.

Another way Catholics “venerate” Mary is by creating statues and images of her. Many Catholics use images of Mary as a “good luck charm.” Any cursory reading of the Bible will reveal this practice as blatant idolatry (Exodus 20:4–6; 1 Corinthians 12:1–2; 1 John 5:21). Rubbing rosary beads is idolatry. Lighting candles before a statue or portrayal of Msry is idolatry. Burying a Mary statue in hopes of selling your home (and countless other Catholic practices) is idolatry.

The terminology is not the issue. Whether the practice is described as “worship” or “veneration” or any other term, the problem is the same. Any time we ascribe something that belongs to God to someone else, it is idolatry. The Bible nowhere instructs us to revere, pray to, rely on, or “idolize” anyone other than God. We are to worship God alone. Glory, praise, and honor belong to God alone. Only God is worthy to “receive glory and honor and power” (Revelation 4:11). God alone is worthy to receive our worship, adoration, and praise (Nehemiah 9:6; Revelation 15:4).

Who are the “Real” Israelites?

Is it the African-Americans, The Native Americans, The Hispanics, or all of them?

First, let’s look at Abraham real quick.

Where is Ur of Chaldea? Well, Archaeologists have now determined where exactly the city of Ur was located in ancient times. Ancient Chaldea The southernmost portion of ancient Sumer was called Chaldea, and the most important Sumerian city was located on the western portion of the Euphrates River and it was called Ur. The land of Chaldea contain riches beyond imagination, and Ur was the wealthiest city.

So Ur of the Chaldeans was clear across the Saudi Arabian Penninsula from Africa.

And where was Abraham—the father of many nations to include a Israel—from? So, while the Bible does not state that Abraham was born in Ur, his father and Uncle were. And God said in Genesis 15:7; 7: Then He said to him, “I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it.”

And God told Abraham to go to the land of Canaan where God gave that land to Abraham as an inheritance, for his descendants, mainly the Israelites. So if any thing the Israelites can trace their lineage back through Abraham to ancient Sumeria, not Africa.

Anyway, I digress.

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how many different theories there are regarding what happened to the lost tribes of Israel. There are many different groups who claim to be the true descendants of the biblical Israelites.

British-Israelism (also known as Anglo-Israelism) claims that the ancient Israelites migrated to England and other parts of Europe. As a result, the people of England and the United States are the true Israelites.

The Black Hebrews or Black Israelites claim that Africans are the true Israelites.

Groups such as the “Gathering of Christ” claim that African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders are the true Israelites.

There are also groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India which claim to be the true descendants of the Israelites. There is even a Japanese Israelism which claims some of the lost tribes migrated all the way to Japan.

But why do all these groups claim they are the true Israelites? The simple answer is found in (Genesis 12:1-3; Deuteronomy 7:7-9). Where God Chose Israel ad His chosen nation. Why wouldn’t people want to be a part of Gods plan.

So, maybe, just maybe, the Israelis of today are the true descendants of the ancient Israelites.

So sorry to burst anyone’s bubble out there concerning the Anglo-Israelites, Black Israelites, and whoever-else-says-we-are-the-true-Israelites. God keeps excellent records. God knows who His people are. And the identity of His chosen nation is not a secret or a mystery to Him.

Was there a Pre-Adamic Race of Humans before Adam?

The concept of a pre-Adamic race is the idea that God created a race of humans who lived on the Earth before He created Adam, the first man. This theory has been postulated by various scholars at various times throughout history. Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate (circa A.D. 331–363) and Calvinist theologian Isaac de La Peyrère (1596-1676) are two notable examples.

Let us look at two popular facets of the Preadamite theory and then at what the Bible says about it: The hypothesis as it was proposed by Isaac de La Peyrère and the form which it takes in the “Gap Theory” (also known as the Ruin-Reconstruction interpretation). According to La Peyrère, God created the Gentiles on the sixth day when He said, “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26). He did not create the Jews until after the seventh day, His day of rest. At some point after the seventh day, God created Adam, the father of the Jews.

La Peyrère cited Scripture to support his theory. Cain’s fear of being lynched, his marriage to an unknown woman and the fact that he founded a city (Genesis 4:14-17) are all interpreted as evidence that another race of men coexisted with Adam and his family.

La Peyrère subsequently reinterpreted other passages of Scripture in light of his peculiar understanding of the Genesis account. Consider a very familiar passage, Romans 5:12-14: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.”

This passage is traditionally interpreted as meaning that death began with Adam’s sin and reigned unchecked among men (even among those who haven’t actually eaten the forbidden fruit, those who have sinned but not “in the likeness of the offense of Adam”) until the Law was given to Moses.

La Peyrère interpreted this passage another way. According to La Peyrère, the pre-Adamic Gentiles sinned against God, but in a manner less egregious than Adam (which is why Adam’s sin brought death while theirs didn’t). They merely sinned against God’s moral will, while Adam sinned against His Law. Adam disobeyed God’s prohibition by eating the forbidden fruit. He broke what La Peyrère called the Law of Paradise. Thus, according to La Peyrère, the pre-Adamic Gentiles were those who “had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam.”

By now it’s obvious how misinterpreting one or two passages of Scripture can lead to all kinds of warped perceptions. The Scriptural problems with La Peyrère’s interpretations are numerous.

First, Adam is called the “first man” (1 Corinthians 15:45). This is inconsistent with the idea that God created men before Adam.

Second, according to La Peyrère, the Gentiles were to live outside of the Garden of Eden while Adam enjoyed paradise (a privilege which came with the responsibility of obeying the Law of Paradise—not eating the forbidden fruit). Genesis 2:5-8, however, says quite plainly that before God created “the man whom He had formed,” the very same man which He placed in the garden, there were no men upon the earth to cultivate the ground.

Third, God created Eve for Adam because he was alone, there was no one else like him around (“It is not good for the man to be alone… but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him” Genesis 2:18, 20).

Fourth, Adam named his wife “Eve” “because she was the mother of all the living” (Genesis 3:20). The list goes on, but these passages should suffice to refute La Peyrère’s misinterpretation.

As for Cain’s fear of being lynched, his marriage to an unknown woman and the fact that he founded a city (Genesis 4:14-17), Adam was almost 130 years old by the time that Cain killed Abel (Adam had Seth, his next son after Abel’s death, when he was about 130 years old; Genesis 4:25; 5:3). And we know that Adam had sons and daughters (Genesis 5:3). At 130 he could have had grandkids and great-grandkids by the time that Cain killed Abel. Cain had plenty of family members to be afraid of after killing his brother.

Cain apparently married a family member (a necessity back then) at some point before Abel’s murder. It seems odd to us today, but incest wasn’t outlawed by God until the Law of Moses. It may have been around that time that generations of degenerative genetic mutations began to take a toll on our DNA. God outlawed incest for our protection. It became (and remains) dangerous for close relatives to procreate because of shared genetic defects which become expressed in their children causing severe deformities and other problems.

As for Cain founding a city, if he lived to be the average age back then, he probably lived to be about 900 years old. By the time he died, his family would have been a small city. If Cain had a child at the age of 30, and his child had a child at the age of 30 and so on, Cain could have produced 30 generations by the time he died (30 generations times 30 years each equals 900 years).

The Ruin-Reconstruction interpretation, or Gap Theory, takes a somewhat different approach to the pre-Adamic race theory. According to this Theory, an unspecified amount of time passed between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, during which God created a pre-Adamic race of men who lived upon the earth until God destroyed them in judgment. Other extinct creatures, like the dinosaurs, are said to have also lived during this time. Afterwards, the theory goes, God remodeled the earth in six days. He created Adam on the sixth day, and the rest is history. Some say that Satan’s fall occurred at some point during the ambiguous gap.

A “mistranslation” has contributed to the case for this misinterpretation. In the King James Version of the Bible, God says to Adam, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” Proponents of the Gap Theory emphasize the word “replenish.” They interpret the text as saying that Adam and Eve were to refill the Earth. They were to fill it again. The problem with this view is that, regardless of what it says in English translations, the Hebrew word is mâlê’, and it simply means “to fill” or “to be full.” Moreover, the English translators of the King James Version knew the word means “to fill.” They chose “replenish” because, in 17th-century Elizabethan English, “replenish” meant “to fill” (similar to how in modern English the word “replete” doesn’t mean to “abound again,” it simply means “abundant” or “abounding”). Language is not static, but dynamic. Words change meaning over time. Today “replenish” means “to fill again.” It didn’t mean the same thing in 17th century England. Nearly all modern translations translate mâlê’ as simply “fill” in the passage in question (Genesis 1:28).

Proponents of the Gap Theory respond by pointing out that God said to Noah after the flood, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill [mâlê’] the earth” (Genesis 9:1). It is evident that Noah was meant to refill the earth after the flood. Can’t we then interpret the same command to Adam to mean the same thing—that Adam was to repopulate the earth after God’s judgment? The fact is that, regardless what the condition of the planet was before Noah’s flood, God didn’t tell Noah to “refill” the Earth. He simply said to fill it. God chose the words He chose and no others. If He said “refill,” that would have been something, but since He just said “fill,” that argument falls flat.

The real problem with the Gap Theory is that it places human mortality (pre-Adamic human mortality) before Adam’s sin. The Bible is quite clear that death entered in through Adam’s sin. “For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:21-22). Regardless of whether or not we believe in animal mortality before sin, the Bible is quite explicit about human mortality before Adam’s sin. There wasn’t any. To deny this is to deny a central Christian doctrine.

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IS THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH THE ONE TRUE CHURCH?

PART TWO

There is no mention in the Bible of the papacy, worship/adoration of Mary (or the immaculate conception of Mary, the perpetual virginity of Mary, the assumption of Mary, or Mary as co-redemptrix and mediatrix), petitioning saints in heaven for their prayers, apostolic succession, the ordinances of the church functioning as sacraments, infant baptism, confession of sin to a priest, purgatory, indulgences, or the equal authority of church tradition and Scripture. So, if the origin of the Catholic Church is not in the teachings of Jesus and His apostles, as recorded in the New Testament, what is the true origin of the Catholic Church?

We know that for about the first 280 years of Christian history, Christianity was banned by the Roman Empire, and Christians were terribly persecuted. Some Emporers threw Christians in the Gladiator Arenas., some hung Christians alongside roads then set them on fire at night to help light the roads to see better. However, this changed after the “conversion” of the Roman Emperor Constantine. Constantine provided religious toleration with the Edict of Milan in AD 313, effectively lifting the ban on Christianity. Later, in AD 325, Constantine called the Council of Nicea in an attempt to unify Christianity. Constantine envisioned Christianity as a religion that could unite the Roman Empire, which at that time was beginning to fragment and divide. While this may have seemed to be a positive development for the Christian church, the results were anything but positive. One reason is that Constantine refused to fully embrace the Christian faith but continued many of his pagan beliefs and practices, so the Christian church that Constantine and his successors promoted progressively became a mixture of true Christianity and Roman paganism.

Most Roman Catholic beliefs and practices regarding Mary are completely absent from the Bible. So, where did those beliefs come from? The Roman Catholic view of Mary has far more in common with the Isis mother-goddess religion of Egypt than it does with anything taught in the New Testament. Interestingly, the first hints of Catholic Mariology occur in the writings of Origen, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, which happened to be the focal point of Isis worship.

The Lord’s Supper being a consumption of the literal body and blood of Jesus is not taught in the Bible. The idea that bread and wine are miraculously transformed into the literal body and blood of Jesus (transubstantiation) is not biblical. However, several ancient pagan religions, including Mithraism, which was very popular in the Roman Empire, had some form of “theophagy” (the eating of one’s god) as a ritualistic practice.

Roman Catholicism has “saints” one can pray to in order to gain a particular blessing. For example, Saint Gianna Beretta Molla is the patron saint of fertility. Francis of Assisi is the patron saint of animals. There are multiple patron saints of healing and comfort. Nowhere is even a hint of this taught in Scripture. Just as the Roman pantheon of gods had a god of love, a god of peace, a god of war, a god of strength, a god of wisdom, etc., so the Catholic Church has a saint who is “in charge” over each of these and many other categories. Many Roman cities had a god specific to the city, and the Catholic Church provided “patron saints” for cities as well.

The idea that the Roman bishop is the vicar of Christ, the supreme leader of the Christian Church, is utterly foreign to the Word of God. The supremacy of the Roman bishop (the papacy) was created with the support of the Roman emperors. While most other bishops (and Christians) resisted the idea of the Roman bishop being supreme, the Roman bishop eventually rose to supremacy, again, due to the power and influence of the Roman emperors. After the western half of the Roman Empire collapsed, the popes took on the title that had previously belonged to the Roman emperors—Pontifex Maximus.

The origin of the Catholic Church is the tragic compromise of Christianity with the pagan religions that surrounded it. Instead of proclaiming the gospel and converting the pagans, the Catholic Church “Christianized” the pagan religions and “paganized” Christianity. By blurring the differences and erasing the distinctions, the Catholic Church made itself attractive to the idolatrous people of the Roman Empire. One result was the Catholic Church becoming the supreme religion in the Roman world for centuries. However, another result was the most dominant form of Christianity apostatizing from the true gospel of Jesus Christ and the true proclamation of God’s Word.

Second Timothy 4:3–4 declares, “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”