No video today, and some of you may even have noticed this isn’t my usual day for posting. I had to write this because of what I read this morning in the paper.
In the Florida Today paper there is a Catholic Priest who has been relieved of his flock pending investigation of sexual abuse when he was in a Pennsylvania diocese.
It isn’t the sexual abuse I find disturbing, which it is, but the story about the way the visiting Priest addressed the congregation about it.
Copying from what the paper reported, here is part of the Priest’s message:
“Our Mother (Mary) teaches us to pray in moments of desperation…in moments of need. “
He also said:
“Our Lady is a lady of hope…(God) will never abandon us, he’s never going to abandon this church…Mary
help us, we are so lost…”
I read this and sighed because they are so lost. Will God abandon those who have abandoned him? The Bible teaches us that when we reject God he will allow us to be on our own. Did this priest pray to God for help? No, he didn’t. Did he pray to Jesus for help? No, he didn’t. Did he pray
YES- he did!!
“Oh, wait a minute, Steve! When did Yeshua ever disown his own mother?”
John tells us this happened in his Gospel, Chapter 19 verses 25-27:
“Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.” (NIV)
Essentially, Yeshua separated himself from the last “human family” he had before becoming the sacrificial lamb for all humanity.
So when this priest said they are lost, he was more correct than he knows. There is absolutely no place at all in the Bible where Mary teaches anyone, anything. He says “Our Lady is a lady of hope..”; what happened to Jesus? And where is God all this time? Is there more hope for us in Mary than in Yeshua or God? In fact, when he called out to Mary to help them, he showed anyone who knows the Bible just how lost they really are- the epitome of the blind leading the blind. He was blindly calling for spiritual help to someone who can’t help them, ignoring the only One who can help them! Then, in the same breath, he says that One (God) will never abandon them, even though they clearly have abandoned him by praying to a human being.
And the congregation was (typically) blindly following. The paper says the message was well received by many, giving them hope. Hope in what? Where do they place their hope? In Mary?
What about Psalm 33:20-22? We are told:
We put our hope in the Lord.
He is our help and our shield.
In him our hearts rejoice,
for we trust in his holy name.
Let your unfailing love surround us, Lord,
for our hope is in you alone.
Don’t they read the Psalms in the Catholic church? Aren’t the priests trained in the entire Bible?
Let’s go to the New Covenant…does
How can the Catholic church leadership have missed all of this?
I am not saying this just to pick on the Catholic Church, although I have to say they do make it very easy to do so. No! I am trying to get them to open their eyes. They say they want to know why they have had such T’souris in the past 10 or more years? Well, I think it started much earlier than the past few years or decades. I started when they rejected God and Yeshua (except through lip service during the Mass) and began praying to their Saints, who are nothing more than people. It began when they filled their sanctuaries with graven images, knelt before them, and prayed to them. This is idolatry and unacceptable to God. They abandoned the path that Yeshua told them to walk, which is the same path along on which the Disciples led the Gentiles who accepted Messiah in the First Century.
Instead, the modern church is following the ways of Constantine and subtle forms of pagan worship he introduced into the Canon he established at the Council of Nicene in the Third Century, which is the foundation for the modern Catholic church, as well as most of Christianity.
As we come closer to the End Days, we see many Christians beginning to recognize the veil that has been pulled over their eyes, and they are beginning to know Yeshua for who he really is. And in doing so they want to learn and follow Torah, which is what he taught. They are rejecting the Constantinian doctrines and coming back to the style of worship that God commanded of us all.
I pray this continues so that as the Christians come to know their Messiah for who he really is, then the Jews will see that Christianity is becoming more like what it was when it started, i.e. Torah honoring people who have faithfully accepted Yeshua as the Messiah God promised to the world; to the Jew first, then to the nations. Perhaps when my Jewish brothers and sisters can see Gentiles who are praying to and worshiping God (alone) and honoring Torah, they will (finally) become jealous for their own Messiah.
Pray for the Catholic church; but more importantly, pray for those 1.2 Billion or so Catholics throughout the world who are being led down the path to Sheol. Pray that their eyes open and their ears unclog so their hearts can become wise, and they can be saved before it is too late.
Man oh man, do they ever need it!
