Exposing the Heresies of the Catholic Church: Mary Worship

After his prophetic vision of the eternal glories of heaven at the end of the book of Revelation, the apostle John described how he was overwhelmed by what he’d seen.

And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed me these things. But he said to me, “Do not do that. I am a fellow servant of yours and of your brethren the prophets and of those who heed the words of this book. Worship God.” (Revelation22:8-9)

The Roman Catholic Church has committed the same error as John, promoting a mere citizen of heaven to an improper place of authority and honor. Despite the overwhelming testimony of Scripture, the Catholic Church has elevated Mary—a self-described servant of the Lord (Luke 1:38)—to the same level as God, if not higher.

In his Ineffabilis Deus in 1854, Pope Pius IX established as dogma the immaculate conception of Mary, which preserved her from inheriting original sin. His concluding statements provide a good summary of the Catholic view of Mary.

Let all the children of the Catholic Church, who are so very dear to us, hear these words of ours. With a still more ardent zeal for piety, religion and love, let them continue to venerate, invoke and pray to the most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, conceived without original sin. Let them fly with utter confidence to this most sweet Mother of mercy and grace in all dangers, difficulties, needs, doubts and fears. Under her guidance, under her patronage, under her kindness and protection, nothing is to be feared; nothing is hopeless. Because, while bearing toward us a truly motherly affection and having in her care the work of our salvation, she is solicitous about the whole human race. And since she has been appointed by God to be the Queen of heaven and earth, and is exalted above all the choirs of angels and saints, and even stands at the right hand of her only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, she presents our petitions in a most efficacious manner. What she asks, she obtains. Her pleas can never be unheard.

Those words are echoed and expanded on throughout Roman Catholic history. Tradition dictates that Mary is part of the monarchy of heaven, soliciting grace and mercy from the Lord on behalf of sinners, and covering sin by distributing from her Treasury of Merit. She became a co-redeemer with Christ in His suffering on the cross, and is now a co-mediator alongside Him in heaven—essentially an alternative avenue of access to God. She replaces the Holy Spirit in bestowing aid and comfort to believers. In effect, she becomes an additional member of the Trinity.

That blasphemy stands in sharp contrast to what Scripture actually says about Mary, and even what she says about herself. Luke 1:46-55 records her humble reaction to the news that she would give birth to the Son of God.    Continue at John F. MacArthur Jr.

The Scandal of Reformed Division: Daniel Hyde’s Challenge to the Churches

Reformed churches have made the characteristics that distinguish them from one another into idols that divide the church. Although he does not put it in such terms, that, essentially, is Daniel Hyde’s charge in his important recent address at the 38th meeting of the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council. Hyde, the pastor of Oceanside United Reformed Church in California and the author of numerous books, points out that according to the New Testament the whole church is, in fact, one in Christ. He also points out that already during Paul’s life he had to exhort the church to walk in a spirit of peace and unity. In Hyde’s words:

Paul’s exhortation is evidence that we do not do this anywhere near the level to which God demands and desires and that we need. Simul iustus et peccator is a living reality for the church. The problem of unity in the Reformed churches, then, is sin. That’s why on a bad day I would say that the Reformed churches are hopelessly divided in the spirit of Corinth: “’I follow Paul,’” or ’I follow Apollos,’ or ‘I follow Cephas,’ or ‘I follow Christ’” (1 Cor. 1:12).

“The problem of unity in the Reformed churches, then, is sin.” I appreciate it that Hyde came out and said what I believe many among us would actually deny. He goes on to speak in terms that should be as challenging to conservative Reformed believers as they are mystifying to the majority of Christians (who have never even heard of these moments in Reformed history, these concepts and practices that are at the core of our self-understanding):   Continue at Matthew Tuininga

The Idolization of Children Is the Hatred of Them

Permanent, irresponsible adolescence permeates modern Western society, from those adults who spend more hours in the day on Xbox than they do talking to loved ones, through to those for whom the failure of a sports team is grounds for serious depression and even, in extreme cases, thoughts of suicide. At least in the West we live in a world where the battle simply for survival is, by and large, over, or at least not imminent: few of us do not know when and whence our next meal is coming; there are no famines in Britain and America as there have been in Africa; and ethnic cleansing is not something that many of us experience on a daily basis. We have plenty of material possessions and do not struggle in the way that even our grandparents may have had to do in the twenties and thirties. Yet we live in a world where anxiety levels are high, where suicide is not that uncommon, and where the national bill for anti-depressants is awe-inspiring.

Why is this the case? Mohler suggests, and I think he is right, that the coddling and over-protection of children has created a generation many of whose members have no sense of proportion, no ability to take responsibility for themselves, and no capacity for handling set-backs and contradictions. Just look at the blog world, where all kinds of crazy, extremist rhetoric is used about absolute trivia. Then just reflect on emails you have probably received, how rude and abrupt and extreme people are prepared to be electronically, compared to how sycophantic and spineless they often are face to face. The virtual world is a mirror of reality: a place where everyone demands to be heard on anything they want to speak about, yet where nobody has to take responsibility or face the consequences of their actions.   Read it all HERE

Discipleship and the Idols of Family and Culture

Much has been written about the cost of discipleship. Even more has been said. And yet, as often as we hear about all that Jesus demands of us as his disciples, we cannot avoid being set off balance when we run into a difficult passage like Luke 14:26-27, 33:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. . . . So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

 Who doesn't bristle under the sharp language of hate, cross bearing, and renunciation? It seems to cut against everything that makes us who we are. Indeed, it does.

So what is Jesus up to in this passage? Is he really suggesting that we should “hate” our families, and even ourselves, with all that such a stance would entail? On the one hand, we must obviously say “no.” After all, Jesus is the one who perfectly fulfilled the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself, and even calls us to love our enemies. Whatever he means, he is not contradicting himself, and he is not suggesting that we do something that is out of accord with the rest of God’s Word. Keep Reading...

The Fun Cult (or the Cult of Fun)

Along with money, nature, sex, religion, youth, politics, and self, one common American idol is fun or entertainment.  Everything is advertised as being fun – from fun learning programs in schools, to fun office environments, to fun doctor’s offices, fun rules the day.  This is such a major idol in America that some people can even make a living playing games (or acting), and others will spend their living to watch others play games (or act a part).  Worse yet, we’ll hail those who make a living playing games as heroes and stars - despite the fact that many of them have no idea what the “real world” is like.  Entertainment is a huge American idol.  Q/A #1 of the American catechism is this: “The chief end of man is to glorify fun and enjoy it forever.” 

I like how Carl Trueman puts this in “Boring Ourselves to Life.”  He cites Pascal’s Pensees and notes that entertainment is distraction: “Distraction is the production of entertainment for the purpose of taking one’s mind off the deeper realities of life.”  Or, in other words, “how we fill our lives with rubbish instead of reflecting upon real truths.”  Of course, moderated entertainment is fine provided it is not sinful, but when it becomes the “means of keeping us from facing up to the truths of our creaturely existence,” it is profoundly bad for us. Keep Reading>>>

The Idol of Relevance

Here is a piercing critique of the church’s uncritical pursuit of relevance for the sake of relevance. His argument: “Never have Christians pursued relevance more strenuously; never have Christians been more irrelevant” (p. 12). Guinness explains it like this:

By our uncritical pursuit of relevance we have actually courted irrelevance; by our breathless chase after relevance without a matching commitment to faithfulness, we have become not only unfaithful but irrelevant; by our determined efforts to redefine ourselves in ways that are more compelling to the modern world than are faithful to Christ, we have lost not only our identity but our authority and our relevance. Our crying need is to be faithful as well as relevant. (p. 11)

This is because, as Guinness writes, faithfulness to eternal truth is the means to genuine cultural relevance. In every generation, our goal is centered on the proclamation and advance of the gospel of Jesus Christ through the local church. Only because of the gospel’s continued relevance is it rightfully called the “good news.” Keep Reading>>>

Leadership Book Interview: Surprised by Grace with Tullian Tchividjian

My friend Tullian Tchividjian is the Senior Pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and a visiting professor of theology at Reformed Theological Seminary. He blogs at The Gospel Coalition site here.
Tullian is named after Tertullian, who, oddly enough, was the topic of Sunday lunch conversation this week. Tullian is becoming more widely known, and for good reason. He is a solid thinker, strong communicator, and passionate for the gospel.
If you are coming by to discuss yesterday's blog on contextualization, you might appreciated Tullian's article on the subject or his message at Advance 10.
Also, this Sunday was a big day at their church as they merged their two services. Tullians writes about that here (it's worth your time to go and read it before reading our interview). I listened to his message on the subject last week, where he exhorted believers to be missional and not tribal. Continue reading HERE

Video Games, Idols, and Your Child’s Heart

Video games are one of the most influential and time consuming recreational activities in our society today. On average gamers spend 18 hours per week playing video games. This extensive time investment is reflected in the money invested in video game consoles and software. In 2009, $19.7 billion was spent on video games worldwide, $2.6 billion more than was spent on movies in both box office ticket sales and DVD sales combined.* Many parents are surprised to discover that video games generate more profit than Hollywood.

What this all means is that few children escape the influence of video games, and the temptation to idolatry.

So how can parents lead their children in such a media-crazed world? Read it all HERE

Stop Worshiping & Idolizing Celebrity Preachers - Paul Washer

HT: Reformed Voices

Book Review: Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters

If you ask the average American on the streets if we are a nation given to idols, the obvious answer would be, “No!”. Idolatry was commonplace in the pagan Greek and Roman cultures, but may scarcely be found in these more enlightened times. But what if there really are counterfeit gods all around us, only the kind not made of stone or metal? “In Ezekiel 14:3,” Keller reminds us, “God says about elders of Israel, 'these men have set up idols in their hearts.' Like us, the elders must have responded to the charge, 'Idols? What idols? I don't see any idols?' God was saying that the human heart takes good things like career, love, and material possessions, even family, and turns them into ultimate things. Our hearts deify them as the integrating centers of our lives, because, we think, they can give us significance and security, safety and complete fulfillment, if we attain them”. If this really is the definition of idolatry, then perhaps it is not so foreign as we think. And perhaps we are not just given over to, but being destroyed by idols. If we look for “safety and complete fulfillment” in things that can never finally provide that, then are we not doomed to despair? Are there not a great many more Wall Street experiences in store for us? Read the rest HERE

The Idol Factory

The Idol Factory from Sovereign Grace Ministries on Vimeo.

HT: Recover the Gospel

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