God's Wisdom In A Nutshell

Hello all!

I hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family and friends.  I certainly did -in fact my entire week was full of family activities and pure enjoyment!

Today I want to share with my readers why 16 years ago, I chose to walk away from the Catholic church and simply pick up a Bible. I was in a situation where I needed to gain some knowledge of God due to the tornado that was devastating my life. I didn’t find any relief or answers in Catholicism.

God says in Jeremiah 29:13 “you will seek me and find me, if you seek me with your entire heart.” Through my daily Bible reading sessions that lasted 1-3 hours, God imparted His Wisdom unto me.   Passages of Scripture were illuminated and touched my soul in a way that many Christians speak about- you simply know that what you are reading is pure truth. I later learned that this is one way God communicates with those that are diligent enough to spend time with His book.

I found some discrepancies in the Catholic faith:

1. Mary is mentioned more in Catholic mass than Jesus, the King of the world, and Catholics pray to Mary.

” Jesus answered, I am the way the Truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me.”(John 14:6)

Mary is mentioned only a handful of times in the Bible. Jesus came to earth, grew up, taught for 3 1/2 years and died a criminal’s death. He then supernaturally rose from the dead to later appear in the flesh to the apostles. Jesus is the name above all names and He alone, is worth worshiping and studying.

…but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name above all names,…(Phil 2:8-11)

Even Mary said “My spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:47)  Mary knew very well that she was simply a human being who needed a savior.

2. Catholics teach that there were two immaculate conceptions, they call one the immaculate conception and one the virgin birth.

They call Jesus’ birth  the virgin birth. Then they say that  Mary the mother of God was conceived by immaculate conception. There is simply no Scripture to back up the belief that Mary was conceived by the Holy Spirit as well. In fact, if Mary’s parents had conceived her by immaculate conception she would have been familiar with the concept and when the angel told her that she was pregnant without being with a man she wouldn’t have said “How can this be, said Mary, since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34NIV) Then the most compelling statement from Mary that illuminates her submissiveness to God was stated in Luke 1:38 “I am the Lord’s servant, may everything you have said about me come true…”

3.  Catholics say that Mary was sinless and full of grace.

Mary was full of grace but she did nothing to deserve it.  Grace is unmerited favor, all believers receive grace.  Mary was highly favored by God because He chose her. No where in the Bible does it teach that Mary was sinless. The only sinless person who ever walked the earth was the Lord Jesus Christ. “for all sin and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). And  “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned we make Him a liar, and His Word is not in us.”(1 John 8-10). We may have periods in our lives where we have had no unclean thoughts, no hate in our heart, and we are living within the teachings of Scripture. This was probably the reason Mary was chosen to conceive the Christ child. Mary was about 13 or 14 years old when she was pregnant with Jesus and she lived with her parents, so Mary was not living in any sort of sin at the time. But as human beings however, these sinless periods are  short lived and our sin nature emerges- at which time we need to repent and ask for forgiveness.

4. Catholics have their own set of the Ten Commandments

Every other religion adheres to the Ten Commandments in the Holy Bible.  Catholics removed Commandment #2 and split Commandment #9 into two in order to make ten. Even the monuments in the USA that were removed because of separation of church and state, had the original Ten Commandments, not the Catholic ten commandments. Commandment #2 in the Holy Bible states “Thou shall not make for thyself any graven image or any likeness of anything in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shall not bow down thyself to them.”  Many people in the Catholic faith bow down to the Virgin Mary’s statue and pray to her. Many also bow down to the Pope and Bishops. Remember, God wrote all Ten Commandments with His finger on stone tablets which He gave to Moses in order to teach the Israelites how they can be blessed. Teaching another doctrine is sin.

After removing the second commandment, Catholics needed to find a way to make ten out of the remaining commandments, so they simply split number nine into two. The Catholic commandment nine and ten are as follows: “thou shall not covet thy neighbors wife” and “thou shall not covet thy neighbors goods.”  The tenth commandment of the Holy Bible states “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor”. — Exodus 20:17.

This is what Jesus had to say about altering His Commandments, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far away, their worship is a farce, for they replace God’s commandments with their own man-made teachings. For you ignore God’s specific laws and substitute your own traditions. You reject God’s laws in order to hold on to your own traditions.” (Mark 7:7-9)

5. Catholics call priests “Father” which is in direct contradiction to the Word of God.

“And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.”(Matthew 23:9)

All throughout the Bible we are taught that obedience to the Word of God brings blessings of peace, prosperity (without painful toil -Prov 10:22),  health and abundance. How can we receive these blessings if we sin by following these false denominational teachings!

Away from me, Satan!” Jesus declared. “For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.'”(Matt 4:10)

“I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to anyone else, nor share my praise with carved idols.”(Isaiah 42:8)

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I wrote this post to challenge you to research the denomination that you follow. Simply attending church believing that your denomination is superior yet knowing nothing practical that can help you through the tornados of life, seems foolish. God lets you understand the truth of who He is and no one is pushed aside or denied the privilege of knowing Him. I challenge you to pick up a Holy Bible and read. If you truly want to know God- you will find Him.

Keep in mind that the fruit of oneness with God is a changed life. The fruit of the Spirit is evidence of this: Love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self control. Thousands of Catholic priests molest- they simply cannot know God and the power He offers His followers- power to overcome anything in life!

Food for thought,

Lisa