Revelation: The Bride, the Beast & Babylon Page #4

to be his mother,

The scriptures teach nowhere

That she is to be deified

or worshiped.

Mary had always been important

in ancient Christian history,

But over the middle ages

She becomes elevated almost

to a-looking at it detachedly-

Almost to the rank

of a semi-Deity.

The virgin Mary

was believed to be the one

Who would speak up

for guilty human beings

To her supremely

virtuous and judgmental

And rather Censorius son.

Very strange image,

But that's how the religious art

of the period shows it.

The bible does not venerate Mary

as a special saint.

It lifts her up as a pure,

wonderful woman

Used by god

to give birth to the messiah.

Yet,

at the council of Nicea in 325,

The church elevated Mary

to the stature of a goddess

And co-Mediator with Christ.

Even as early

as the late 4th century,

Churches were being dedicated

to the virgin Mary.

But sadly, these were not

the only errors

That slipped in

during this time.

During the apostolic age,

baptism was a sacred ceremony

Reserved only

for those old enough

To make

a rational decision for Christ.

It was a public testimony

Of accepting Christ

and his forgiveness.

Baptism literally

represents being dead

And buried to our old life

And being resurrected,

or born again,

To a new life in Christ.

It comes to be,

in the course of the centuries,

Seen more as a right

of initiation into Christianity

And so it begins happening

at earlier stages of life,

When you're sort of

in late childhood

Or early adolescence

and deemed ready,

To make that commitment

to your faith.

The baptism ceremony was also

performed in a lake or a river

Where a person

could be fully submerged,

Signifying they were

fully washed from their sins.

The practice of baptism

Was gradually altered

by the church.

Hundreds of years after Christ,

Sprinkling and pouring

were introduced

As a more convenient

mode of baptism.

This actually undermined

The powerful symbolism

of the service

And it contradicts

the example of Jesus,

Who was baptized by immersion.

That continues to be the case

Up until about

the 12th century, actually,

Because

the 12th century is a time

When theologians are really

re-Examining Christian doctrine

And they come to conclude

that original sin,

The sin that all of humanity

has as a result of the fall

In the garden of Eden,

Exists in the soul

from the moment of birth.

There was

this unbiblical concept

That a child

could sin right away

And so, therefore, if he sinned,

He was in danger

of going to hell

And burning forever in hell.

The only way to take care of him

Was to baptize him

And he had to be baptized

into the church.

If you weren't

a member of the church,

It was tickets for you.

So theologians say,

"you know what?

"We need to start baptizing

babies immediately.

"As soon as possible

after they're born

So that in case they die-"

Of course, this is a period

When infant mortality is high

and a lot of babies do die-

"They can get into heaven."

Another Christian truth

That was altered

by pagan influence

Was the lord's supper.

Jesus instituted

the communion service,

Also know by some

as the Eucharist,

To be a beautiful,

yet simple ceremony

Where his followers

would drink unfermented wine

And eat unleavened bread.

These symbols

of Jesus' sinless body and blood

Are designed to help believers

Remember the sacrifice

and the teachings of Christ.

By far, the most important rite

for late medieval Christians

Was the Eucharist or communion,

Or as they most commonly

called it, the mass.

Men and women all come together

And take the sacrament.

They celebrate what we

would call communion,

Taking the body and blood

of Jesus Christ.

But again, under the influence

of heathen rituals,

The holy communion service

Was gradually changed

by church leaders

Into a mystical ceremony.

In this new ritual, fermented

wine was used and the priest,

Allegedly

had the power to transform

The bread and the wine

Into the actual body

and blood of Christ.

This is transubstantiation,

The notion that a priest

transforms the Eucharist

Into the body

and blood of Christ

Through the pronunciation

of the formula

"Hoc est enim corpus meum":

"this is my body."

They were powerful words

Believed to have the property

that when they were uttered

God transformed the nature

of the bread and the wine

Into the body and blood

of a risen Jesus Christ.

Even to the point

where later on they say,

"We are creating god"

By speaking the words

of mystagogia.

Essentially,

what happened on the altar

Was that bread became body,

wine became blood,

But they just still

looked like bread and wine.

This offering

of the sacrifice in the Eucharist,

This sacrifice of praise,

this communal meal

Now becomes not

a remembrance of the sacrifice

But a sacrifice in and of itself

and is giving salvation.

They believed

and they taught that in the mass

Jesus Christ,

in the person of the priest,

Sacrifices Christ

to god the father

And, thereby wins good,

wins quantum of holiness,

Which the church can then assign

To the beneficiaries

of that mass.

Because people believe

that by celebrating a mass

You were doing something good

which was offered up to god,

There was

a theological rationale

For doing it lots

and lots of times.

By 1415- ad-,

At the council of Constance,

Church leaders further decreed

That only the priests

could drink the wine

And the laity

would only receive the bread;

Yet the bible clearly says

That when Jesus established

the communion service

They all drank from it.

About 300 years after Christ

the church began to deviate

From another

of the ten commandments;

Specifically

the fourth commandment

That requires believers

To remember the 7th day

as the Sabbath.

"Remember the Sabbath day,

to keep it holy.

"Six days you shall labor

and do all your work

"But the seventh day

Is the Sabbath

of the lord your god."

In the roman empire

Jews are an old religion

And old religions are respected.

When the Jews

kept fighting against Rome

What had been an umbrella

of safety under Judaism

Becomes a lightning rod

to Christianity

The Christians

become alienated from the Jews

Jews persecuted them

And so they tried to distance

themselves from the Jews.

Church leaders began to devalue

The seventh-Day Sabbath

of the ten commandments

In preference for the more

popular roman Sunday.

Some Christians

mistakenly thought

That you should fast

on the Sabbath

But you could feast on Sunday.

That's what the pagans did,

They feasted on Sunday,

fasted on Saturday.

Not a Jewish concept,

The Jews fasted Friday

and feasted Sabbath,

But that's how

some Christians thought of it.

So if you're fasting on one day

and you're feasting on the next,

You can guess which day

becomes the more popular day.

And Christ

is resurrected on a Sunday

There's a very natural

tendency, therefore,

To mark that and celebrate that.

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