The Origin of the Roman Catholic Church, No. 2

RV25-01

The church council, for example, in Jerusalem, we find in Acts 15:29, directed Christians to abstain from eating food which had been sacrificed to idols, and from illicit sex. But here in the book of the Revelation, we found in Revelation 2:20, this Jezebel-like woman in the church of Thyatira was promoting and encouraging church members to practice both of these things: eating food which had been offered idols; and, the practice of illicit sex. Both of these were pursued under the form of worshiping God, because both of these practices were indeed the ways that the Babylonian mystery religions did worship their gods.

Paganism and the Roman Catholic Church

So whether you look on the banks of the Tiber in Rome, or you look on the banks of the Euphrates in Babylon, you have a religious system which exactly reflected each other right down the line. The only thing different was that the names had been changed, and the applications had been changed. The evil system which descended from the Thyatira type of influence of this Jezebel, we know today as the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church is a pure creation of Satan, and therefore it dreads the light of divine viewpoint, and it fears the Bible.

While the Roman Catholic Church in our generation, and only in our day, has begun making noises about people reading the Bible in their church, and having Catholics read the Bible, that is simply public relations propaganda. When a Roman Catholic goes to his priest and begins questioning (as I heard of one recently) what he finds in his church as the result of what he's read in the Bible, the first thing the priest will do (as he did in the case of this person) is to say, "I want you to bring that Bible to me immediately. You are being dissuaded from the truth. You are being dissuaded from the teachings of Mother Church by reading the Bible. You are not equipped to read the Bible on your own."

The Roman Catholic Church fears the Bible because they did not secure their system and their practices from the Bible. You should not ask the bewildering question, "Where in the world do you get an idea like purgatory?" Where in the world do you get an idea like the Mass as a bloodless sacrifice? Where in the world do you get an idea of unmarried priests and unmarried nuns? Where in the world do you get an idea of convents and monasteries and the whole shebang that goes right down the line that constitutes Roman Catholicism? You don't ask that question because it doesn't come from the Bible. And they don't claim that it comes from the Bible. They claim that it comes from the teaching authority of the church, which are the code words to cover the fact that they've absorbed it over the centuries from the Babylonian mystery religion and its practices.

The leaven of false pagan doctrine in time permeated the whole visible church and produced the Roman Catholic system. It was the kind of influence that this Jezebel-like woman at Thyatira was exercising that brought about that kind of wholesale contamination of the church of the Middle Ages. The Roman Catholic Church, like Jezebel of old, leads people astray from Jesus Christ to the Virgin Mary. It leads people astray from the sacrifice of Christ made once for all to the perpetual sacrifice of the mass. It leads people astray from the Word of God, the Bible, to the word of the Pope as being the authoritative voice of God.

If you will study your history books (the history books that present all of the picture and all of the facts), you will discover that the medieval Roman Catholic Church was characterized monumentally by two evils. One was illicit sex, and the other was idolatry. Isn't it interesting that these are the very two things for which Jesus Christ condemns the church at Thyatira? This church had such tremendous qualities. It was exhilarating as we looked at these qualities word-by-word to see what it meant to be a soldier in the service of Jesus Christ. Isn't it interesting that a church that could be that much in the Lord's work; that effective; that much involved in sound doctrine; and, that much functioning on divine viewpoint, should have (because of some false sense of unity and Christian love) permitted this woman to operate in that congregation, and to bring in the leaven of the concept of cooperating with the pagans in order to win them for Jesus Christ?

You do not win people by accommodating the truth. You do not lead people to the truth by being careful not to tell them the truth. You do not win people to a knowledge of what God has for them by simply loving them and being nice to them. While the Bible tells us that we are to proclaim the truth in love without bitterness and without contempt for the individual, nevertheless, it does tell us that we must proclaim the truth.

I listened to a pretty good tape the other day sent to me by one of my friends in tape work, which was the testimony of a woman who had come out of the charismatic movement. It was a very interesting tape because it was one of those experiences from the other side where the woman literally found herself under demon control, which is what is taking place in the charismatic movement, and is the condition of charismatic people. They are not indwelt by demons, but they are controlled by demons. The whole system is controlled by demons. A pastor's wife had been a very close friend of this lady, and had been involved with her as she descended into the charismatic movement. Then as she came back out of it, the pastor's wife stood by her all she could. The woman finally escaped that system through the help of this pastor's wife and an evangelist who himself had once been a charismatic; who had once been demon-controlled; who had come out of it; and, who knew how to break that power and that attachment so that he knew what this woman was going through. As a result of his help, this woman came out of it.

However, the pastor's wife, in analyzing how it was accomplished, made one serious mistake as I listened to her on the tape. And that was that she said she quit telling her what the Bible said about what she believed, and why that was wrong. She quit telling her, and she just loved her. Well, she may think that this woman was finally won back to the truth just because she was nice to her, and loved her, and took pies over to her that she baked. But she is sadly mistaken if she thinks that that is what brought about enlightenment to this woman's heart. The thing that brought enlightenment was all the Scriptures that that pastor's wife had given; all the divine viewpoint that she had given; and, all that she had sown in that mind that eventually bore fruit. It was the action of that evangelist who knew what he was dealing with in a demon-controlled Christian that broke that control. It was the truth that brought it about.

Do not be deceived by thinking that the kind of thing that this Thyatira Jezebel was recommending of accommodating ourselves socially and in various ways to the unbelieving pagans about us in the United States is going to win them to Jesus Christ. They're going to be won in spite of the fact that you baked a pie for them (particularly the way some of you bake pies perhaps). They're going to be won in spite of the fact that you went over and helped cut their lawn. That is a bunch of baloney, moldy, and sliced thick. And you should not be trapped into that kind of foolishness. There are a lot of Christian people around that are mouthing that kind of nonsense. It is the Word of God, and the Word of God alone, which is alive and powerful. Don't you ever forget it. It is not all your social amenities that are alive and powerful. Whatever niceties you may want to incorporate, and whatever methods of applying the principle of speaking the truth in love that you may want to apply, all of that is well and good. But don't you ever get your eyes on the love part, and off of the part that God uses, which is the truth.

So what we have here is the evils of uniting church and state, which was begun by the Roman Emperor Constantine, culminating in the papacy of the Middle Ages. The result was spiritual adultery and baptized paganism.

Now I'd like to show you a few more of the historical consequences. We're doing isagogics now. We're looking at background. The more you understand of what existed in the ancient world religiously before Christianity came on the scene, the more you'll appreciate the serious thing that this Thyatira Jezebel was doing to the church, and the influence that she brought eventually did become dominant in the church of the Middle Ages. We are going to look at some historical expressions of the union of Christianity with paganism.

Peter

Peter was declared to be the chief of the apostles and the interpreter of divine things. So the claim was that Peter spoke for God: that is, that he was his Vicar on earth. The word "vicar" means His representative. Peter's authority was based in his claim on the keys of the kingdom, which were given to him by Jesus Christ. We have already seen that these keys to opening and shutting the door to eternal life through delivering information to the lost person were delivered on subsequent occasions to all the disciples by Jesus Christ. So these are not exclusive keys of opening and shutting the door to heaven. They are the keys of opening and shutting the door to profession and to information. You have those keys today as much as Peter had those keys.

The claims of the bishop of Rome, interestingly enough, fit in perfectly with the old pagan religious doctrines and practices descended from Babylon. Under that system, the chief interpreter of the pagans was called (it was a Babylonian word, but you pronounced it) "Peter." So this was related to Peter the apostle. The chief interpreter of the Babylonian mysteries was Peter, meaning "interpreter." So it was natural to relate Peter the apostle to that in the minds of the Pagan as being the interpreter of divine things. The pagan interpreter Peter was associated in his work with the city of Rome. Rome was, of course, the principal city of the ancient empire. So they claimed that the apostle Peter of the Scriptures was bishop of Rome. As we've indicated, there is no historical evidence for that. The fact is that the claim was never made that Peter had ever been to Rome, let alone the bishop of Rome, until about four or five centuries after Christ.

So this was a later addition to make the picture fit back into what they wanted to pretend was so from the first. The pagan Peter (or interpreter) possessed the keys of the gods Sybil and Janus so that they might open the interpretation knowledge and information. These were equated to the keys to the kingdom which were given to Peter by Jesus, and (as we said) to all the disciples. The pagans, of course, readily supported the claims of the supreme authority of the bishop of Rome since they saw him incorporating their paganism into Christian practices. What difference did it make that the names had been changed, but everything else was the same? The pagans went right on doing what they had always been doing under their Babylonian system of worshiping their deities and their false gods. When the Pope at Rome indicated that he would play ball with them by incorporating their system into Christianity and relating it with the appropriate terms, they gave him their full support.

So the bishop of Rome (the pope) was recognized by the pagans as Pontifex Maximus, with all the ancient powers over worshipers that that connoted. The chief priest of the Babylonian mystery religion was called Pontifex Maximus. When Julius Caesar came along, he assumed the title of Pontifex Maximus so that the title noted not only supreme spiritual authority, but, from then on, supreme political authority. So in one person, you had the head of the state and you had the head of the church. Later, that, of course, eventuated into the system of the Middle Ages where the Pope in Rome was indeed Pontifex Maximus spiritually so that he appointed the ecclesiastical rulers. He was also Pontifex Maximus politically so that he appointed the kings over nations, and they had to receive their crowns from the hands of the Pope. This whole system, evolving over the centuries, had gradually absorbed the pagan concepts and practices. All was the same. Only the names had been changed.

The Mass

Transubstantiation

Once that wafer is converted into the body of Christ, it is forever the body of Christ. It must forever be used as that and protected as such. Once the Roman Catholic priest has converted the wine in the chalice into the blood of Christ, the very last thing he must do (whatever droplets of wine are left in there) is that: he must put water in there; rinse it out; and, and drink it down so that not a drop of Christ's blood would be wasted. They really do believe that they are handling the body of Jesus Christ as much as if you could have walked up to the Lord Jesus in His earthly life and touched Him; and, as much as if you could have reached up there and touched one of His wounds on the cross and seen His blood on your finger – the real thing. The Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, then, is the old Babylonian magic where a few words transformed elements into the actual body and blood of the deity – into the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ. Thus they secured "the real presence" among the worshipers.

There is something that's interesting that is different. We have no ancient records where the ancient priests, through their magic, ever claimed that the ways that they used were actually turned into the body of the deity. They just said they brought "the real presence" of the deity there, but they never actually said that that was changed into the actual body. That was a Roman Catholic condition. The Roman order Cicero called it madness to consider as deity what one eats. So even the pagans could not quite go so far as to say that they're actually eating the body of their god. They simply said they brought his real presence in their midst.

Purgatory

Purification by Water

Dagon

The water purification, then, of the Babylonian mysteries, was expressed in a variety of ways. It was associated with the fish god Dagon, whose element was water, and who, through water, brought purification to the worshipers. This was done in the form of holy water rituals – water which had been made holy by the priest, and which was then applied in some form such as pouring or sprinkling. This was further extended to holy waters in forms of rivers and lakes.

For example, if you are acquainted with the Ganges River in India, you may be acquainted with the fact that millions of human beings over the centuries (to this very day) go to the Ganges River because it is a river of holy water by which to be cleansed and to be purified from their sins. To this day, Indians do everything possible to get to the Ganges River so that they may bathe in it and receive its purification. The Nile River carried a similar connotation in Egypt. These rivers of holiness and lakes of holiness were so declared by the priestly system.

Well, the pagan practice, of course, was absorbed into the Roman Catholic Church as holy water, which is sprinkled for purification from sins in baptism. The water baptism that is sprinkled, or that is poured on the child in the Roman Catholic system, is purification for washing away sins. Baptismal regeneration goes back to Dagon the fish god, and the practices in his honor of the Babylonian system. When you walk into a Roman Catholic Church, the first thing you see at the door is a little bowl called the fount that has water in it. That water is regularly replaced after it has been treated in a ritual by the priest so that it becomes holy water. As you walk in, you dip your finger in it, and you touch that water on yourself someplace. It is a right of purification. Does the Roman Catholic know why he does this? He doesn't have the foggiest notion why he does this. Why is he doing this? It was in commemoration of the fish god Dagon who, in the ancient system, produced holy water which (if placed upon the worshiper) brought him a cleansing from his evils.

As the Babylonian history religion of the Roman Empire was replaced officially by Christianity, interestingly enough, Jesus Christ became identified with the fish god Dagon, who, of course, represented ultimately Nimrod. Jesus Christ was represented under the very same title that the fish god Dagon had. Dagon was also called Ixthus. This is simply the Greek word meaning "fish." So Dagon the fish god was recognized by the title of Ixthus. Ixthus had been the title of honor of Dagon the fish god. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, this title was taken and converted into an acronym. Every letter was given a specific meaning:

• The iota (the "I") in the Greek was said to stand for "iesous," which is the word for "Jesus."
• The chi (the "x") in the Greek was said to stand for "christos," which is the word for "Christ."
• The theta (the "th") in the Greek was said to stand for "theos," which is the word for "God."
• The upsilon (the "u") in the Greek was said to stand for "whuios," which is the word for "Son."
• The sigma (the "s") in the Greek was said to stand for the word "soter," which is the word for "Savior."

What they were doing was exactly what Joseph Smith did with the rituals of the Masonic Lodge. Joseph Smith in Mormonism took the rituals of the Masonic Lodge and said that these had originally been the rituals of the Jewish people of the Old Testament. But he said that they had become perverted, and that by revelation from God, he had had the original rituals purified. So to this day, what do they do in the temple? It's secret. Why? You can't go in and watch the rituals of the Mormons who are taking what are called their endowments. They're simply going through the pagan rituals indeed of the Masonic Lodge, and the Masonic Lodge ritual is, in all practical effects, identical with what takes place in the temples of Mormonism.

The same thing was claimed here by these pagans. They said, "'Ixthus' has been perverted by the pagans. Here's the real meaning of it." A Pagan who was not really ready and interested in becoming a follower of Jesus Christ, but who now found that it was economically and politically expedient to join the Christian church (since that's what was now approved, and paganism was disapproved) found it no problem in his conscience to say, "Oh, I see. That's fine. I still worship Ixthus like I've always worshiped him. You can call it this, and I don't mind saying that that's what it stands for. I can just go on in my religion in my life like I always have. That's exactly what the bishops of Rome saw, and what they were seeking to promote and to capitalize on.

So water, which was applied in some way in the name of Jesus Christ now, instead of in the name of Dagon, becomes a means for purification from sins and for salvation. Here is where the idea of baptismal regeneration originated. Specifically, here is where baptismal regeneration comes from. It is still practiced by the Roman Catholic Church and many Protestant groups who have in time descended from the Roman Catholic system. Baptismal regeneration such as is taught by the Mormons, or such as is taught by the church of Christ, of course, is not found in the Scriptures whatsoever. It is strictly a system that goes right back to the fish god Dagon. That's where it comes from.

To show how the Pope is related to the fish god Dagon in this respect of the use of water for purification instead of fire, the Pope wears on his head a cap which is called a miter. The Pontifex Maximus of the Babylonian system also wore it. This cap is in the form of a fish's mouth. It was worn by the Pontifex Maximus, and it is worn today by the Pope. You have seen the Pope wear this item on certain occasion. If you looked at it from the side, what you are seeing is what in effect is the mouth of a fish. That miter (that form) was worn by the Babylonian Pontifex Maximus (the high priest) in commemoration of Dagon the fish god. The Pope today wears it. So the next time you see the Pope where he's wearing his miter, take a look, and you'll see the mouth of the fish up there. Remember that what you're seeing is an absorption into Christianity through the influence which was represented by this Jezebel-like woman at Thyatira that brought that kind of perversion as a representation of our Lord Jesus Christ. So salvation through water became a means of entering heaven as the result of the teachings of the Babylonian mysteries about Dagon.

Let's look again at the worship of Baal in the Babylonian mysteries. The sun was identified by Nimrod as the source of all power and all authority. So it was viewed as the god of the universe. The sun god, which was viewed as the source of all lighted heat, was worshiped under the name "Baal," which means "lord," for the sun was the supreme lord. Humanity could not live without the ministrations of the sun god. Another name for Baal worship that you'll find in your Bibles is Molech (the same god). Baal (or Molech) worship involved throwing children into fire as human sacrifices, because one of the things that was involved in the worship of Baal the sun god was to give to him the fruit of the body, and thus to purge the sin of the soul. So the fruit of the woman's body, in the form of her innocent small children, were offered in worship to Baal, thus to purify the soul of her and her husband.

In the Mosaic Law, there was a principle which was laid down for making sacrifices. You can read about this in Numbers 18:9-10. It directed the priests who officiated at the sacrifice to eat part of the sacrifice. He was to participate in the worship. He was to identify himself as the intermediary between the worshiper and God by eating of the sacrifice which was offered to God. Sometimes the worshiper also ate of the sacrifice. Under the system of Baal, the eating of the sacrifice was also practiced. However, there was a little variation here, because the sacrifices were human sacrifices. The imitation of Nimrod's false system was to incorporate everything that God did and to bring it into the system. So again, the idea was that people could see no difference between what the pagan religion was doing and what the Jews were doing – between what the Babylonian mystery religions were doing and what Christianity was claiming.

That's still true today. We have the old idea to look at these cultures and religions of the world and say, "They're all looking for God. They're all trying to go up the mountain by different routes. They all want to be good people. I don't see any difference between them and what they believe." We have people who have been raised in a Protestant denomination and who have gotten involved with Roman Catholicism in one way or another. Maybe they wanted to marry a Catholic man or a Catholic woman. I've had them say to me, "I don't really see much difference between what Roman Catholics teach and believe and what my denomination (that I've been reared in) teaches and believes." They don't know the ancient relationships.

That's exactly what Nimrod tried to do – to bring the ancient practices in line with what God told his people of old in Israel. Human sacrifice was one of the things they practiced. The Mosaic priests were to eat of the sacrifice. So the priests of Baal also ate of the sacrifice when the human sacrifices were made. These priests were called "Cahna Baal," which means "priests of Baal." The "Cahna Baal," in the process of worship with the human sacrifices, would eat part of the human flesh. You can readily see that this word has come down to the English language in the form of "cannibal." That's where we get the word "cannibal" – from "Cahna Baal." It came from the priests of Baal who ate the flesh of the human sacrifice. So people who eat human beings we call "cannibals" today. The Roman Catholic system has preserved the practice of the "Cahna Baal" priests by claiming to convert the round wafer used in the mass into the actual body of Christ so that the Roman Catholic actually feeds on Jesus Christ. Every Roman Catholic who attends mass is a "Cahna Baal." He's a cannibal eating the body of Christ – eating a human sacrifice.

The Crosier

The ancient Babylonian priests had this all the time. This is found, for example, among the Egyptian god of Cyrus. When you see a representation of Cyrus among the Egyptians, he's holding the crosier. It is exactly identical because it was his divining rod. It was his magic wand of power. In the countries of Africa, this same identical shaped instrument is found, and it's called a "fetish." That is a word that has come into the English language. A fetish is something that is a means to create magic. It's a power. It's an instrument of some kind of power.

So the shepherd's staff of the Pope is in reality nothing more than a magic wand of demonism. The combination of all this now becomes very fascinating on the historical scene. I think you have enough of the background of the details of what was taking place of how evil was being absorbed from the political system of the ancient Babylonian religious system to see that indeed the Pope, who was the bishop of Rome, was playing his cards with caginess and wisdom and cleverness in order to establish a base of power from which to function as supreme temporal and spiritual authority over the whole world. That is what Satan has always been trying to do. Satan has always been trying to put somebody on the human realm, whom he can control, who has authority both spiritually and temporally over every human being. The Pope of the Middle Ages became just exactly that kind of creature. But it wasn't successful.

Eventually, the antichrist is going to be another try for the very same thing. The way to do it is by trying to absorb what people are used to, and giving it a different connotation. Why do we have the charismatic movement today with all the attraction; with all the devotion; and, with all the zeal with which people pursue that? It's for the simple reason that Satan is creating a system of religion that will draw people together, no matter what they believe and no matter what their backgrounds are. They will all gather around one issue that they can all supposedly rejoice in, and that is the fact that they have had an experience with God the Holy Spirit. They have had an experience with their God, and no matter what else we believe, we've all got the experience of speaking in tongues.

The lady whose tape I listened to (her testimony on tape) observed the fact that when she finally broke out and could speak in tongues, it was such an exhilarating experience. She was so elated. She thought she had come into the presence of God. Anytime she got a little low, she would break loose and let go with speaking in tongues. She could turn it on and turn it off anytime she wanted to. But then she began to discover that she couldn't control it. She would go hours speaking in tongues until she was exhausted. That began to give her the first clue to the fact that something was wrong here. That was the first inkling that some power now possessed her that she could not control.

That is exactly the system of Roman Catholicism. That is the system of the antichrist. That is the system of the charismatic movement. It is a power that we can all rally around which controls us and which is expressed as one thing we can all see – verbal babbling from our lips. We identify that with having come into the real presence of our God.

In the next session, we'll pick the story up at this point and take you into the Middle Ages to show you the expressions of this and the consequences of what began under the influence of the Jezebel-like female in Thyatira who said, "Let's help the pagans, through our love and our kindness toward them, to become acclimated to Christianity by showing them that it isn't all that much different from the god that they have been worshiping, and the way they've been worshiping. They're all looking for the same God like we are. We can all be friends. We can all be a little open-minded, and we can all be a little understanding." It led to the pouring into hell of millions of Roman Catholics. Remember that there were few people during the Middle Ages that went to heaven. There was only an island here and there of New Testament Christians. People poured into hell by the millions during the Middle Ages. Satan had a field day. He had accomplished a thing that was beyond his wildest dreams of controlling human beings and restraining them from entrance into eternal glory. How some of that took place we'll look at next time.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1977

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