Transcript

Here's grace to you, Bible teacher John MacArthur.

As you are well aware, tonight we are going to do the second in a series on the idolatry of Mary worship.

Just to begin with, I want to call two portions of Scripture to your attention as a kind of a biblical beginning for what it is that I'm going to say.

The first portion of Scripture is one with which we concluded last time, from Jeremiah's prophecy.

In the prophecy of Jeremiah, chapter 7, we read about the children of Judah as those who gathered wood.

In verse 18 of Jeremiah 7, we see that they kindled fire, and the women kneaded dough to make cakes for the Queen of Heaven.

In the 44th chapter of Jeremiah, this same kind of pagan idolatry is addressed again.

In Jeremiah 44, verse 17, God indicts Judah further for burning sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out libations to her.

This is not new; our forefathers did it.

Our kings and our princes did it in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem.

There was widespread worship of this goddess called the Queen of Heaven.

It was addressed by the prophet; people were asked to cease doing it, but they refused to do that.

When trouble came, finally they acquiesced, diminished their attention to the Queen of Heaven, and when the judgment of God fell, they blamed it not on the way they had dealt with God, but on the fact that they had stopped sacrificing to the Queen of Heaven.

They were consumed with the worship of the goddess, and it comes up again in verse 25 of Jeremiah 44, again referring to burning sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven.

God condemns apostate Judah for worshipping this goddess of paganism called the Queen of Heaven, which has had a number of different names throughout history.

The latest name for this goddess, sad to say, is a name borrowed from the earthly mother of our Lord, none other than Mary, who has now been morphed by apostate Christianity into the latest edition of the Queen of Heaven.

Is it important to address this issue?

It is.

1 Timothy, chapter 1, lays out for anyone in ministry what is an important mandate.

In 1 Timothy 1:3, Paul says, I urge you that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines nor pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God, which is by faith.

You have to address the people who teach strange doctrine and myths.

In verse 5, And the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart.

It's important to say at the outset that this is not because we are mad, or hateful, or resentful, but it is love from a pure heart.

If you do not address error, if you do not address strange doctrine and damning heresy, this is not love; this is indifference.

Love from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and a sincere faith demands such a confrontation.

So we come together to address this same age-old goddess heresy of paganism in its newest form, with the modern goddess having stolen the name of Mary—a terrible dishonor to her.

But there is nothing sacred to Satan anyway, and to address it is not a lack of love, but is the sincerest, purest kind of love rising out of a good conscience and a sincere faith.

Now, in part one, I surveyed a brief representation of Mary worship from Roman Catholic dogma and Roman Catholic testimony, starting from the fifth century into the eighteenth century.

We looked at a book called The Glories of Mary by St. Alphonsus di Liguori, originally written in 1745. It is a history of devotion to Mary reaching back to the fifth century, reprinted many, many times.

The particular edition that I had is a reprint copy of a 1931 edition, translated out of Italian; it was originally written in Italian, always with the official imprimatur of the Catholic Church.

I have another edition of it from 1981 with the official stamp of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York.

The inescapable conclusion from all of that—750 pages of material collected through all the centuries and the additional things that have come since the eighteenth century, many of which I refer to—is that the Roman Church has deified Mary.

This is their own affirmation, calling for worship to be given to her, affirming that she possesses attributes that belong only to the Triune God.

Such worship and attribution is blasphemous and satanic and assaults God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

So we dealt with the Roman Catholic attitude toward Mary, as noted from the history of devotion to her.

I want to dig a little deeper now, and I want to look not at expressions and prayers directed at Mary, but I want to look at actual Roman Catholic doctrine.

What do they actually affirm to be true?

That is, from God-inspired revelation regarding Mary.

Everything I am going to say to you is foreign to Scripture.

So if you expect me to give you passages in which they find these things, there are none.

In most cases, even in their own literature, they will acknowledge that there are no Scripture passages to support any of these dogmas.

However, that is not a problem.

Conveniently, in all forms of false Christianity, you have other revelation, whether it's the Book of Mormon, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, or whatever it is.

Heresy is going to come from other sources.

And so, in Roman Catholic theology, you have another source of revelation.

That is the Magisterium; that is the Church tradition.

That which the Church, the Pope who represents Christ, says is inspired by God is, in reality, not only the equal of Scripture but superior to Scripture, since the Church is the only valid authoritative interpreter of Scripture.

It sits in judgment on the Scriptures.

So it's not a problem for them that there's no Bible support for any of these views; they find their support in their own tradition, which they consider to be equal to, if not superior to, Scripture.

Let me give you the list of these dogmas about Mary.

The first one is called the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.

Most people misunderstand this; they think it means that Mary gave birth to Jesus as a virgin.

It has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus.

The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is about the birth of Mary.

It has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus.

In 1854, Pope Pius IX issued the famous bull Ineffabilis Deus.

Ineffabilis means sacred; it means divine; it means transcendent.

This bull, this document that came out from the Pope, is even called Ineffabilis Deus, God's ineffable declaration.

It says this—this is a segment of this passage in Ineffabilis Deus from 1854: Accordingly, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, through the Pope, for the honor of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, for the glory and adornment of the Virgin Mother of God, for the exaltation of the Catholic religion, by the authority of Jesus Christ our Lord, of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own—that is, our own blessed apostles—we declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin.

This is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.

The same Pope Pius IX stated how serious an issue it is to reject this dogma, and I quote: Hence, if anyone shall dare, which God forbid, to think otherwise than has been defined by us, let him know and understand that he is condemned by his own judgment, that he has suffered shipwreck in the faith, that he has separated from the unity of the Church, and that furthermore, by his own action, he incurs the penalties established by law if he should dare to express in words or writing or by any other outward means the error he thinks in his heart.

You are damned, and you will be excommunicated if you question this doctrine.

Now, this is part of the system that, by sheer fear and intimidation and heavy-handedness, binds people to do what they say you must do or be damned.

The Church further says God exempted Mary from sin to make her the repairer of the lost world.

We are all saved by Mary from the shipwreck of sin.

By Mary, the whole human race was rescued from death; she crushed the head of the serpent.

To do this, she had to be guiltless, free from original sin and personal sin.

De Liguori, in his book, writes on page 297 that even her body was preserved from corruption after death.

The flesh of Mary and that of Christ are one; the glory of the Son is one with that of His Mother.

So the first of the Catholic dogmas to which one must adhere or be anathematized is that Mary was immaculately conceived; that is, she was without the stain of original sin.

The second and obvious corollary is the doctrine of her permanent sinlessness.

The Roman Catholic Catechism from 1994, page 490, number 2030, says this: The Church finds its example of holiness and recognizes its model and source in the all-holy Virgin Mary.

De Liguori says, There never was and never will be an offering on the part of a pure creature greater or more perfect than that which Mary made to God when, at the age of three, she presented herself in the Temple to offer God not aromatic spices, nor calves, nor gold, but her entire self in His honor.

At three, she came to the Temple, fell down, kissed the ground, adored God's majesty, thanked Him for His favor, and without reserving anything—her whole mind and body—she vowed virginity, saying, My Lord and my God.

Page 348 of De Liguori says she is called the Holy Child, and she progressed in perfection.

Born sinless, the all-holy Virgin progressed in sinless perfection.

One wonders why she says in Luke 1:47, My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.

That leads to a third point.

And this is one that I think is well known by most people who have any association with the Roman Catholic Church because it's been around a long time.

It's the doctrine of perpetual virginity.

This gets very bizarre.

Not only did she not have original sin—immaculately conceived without the original sin of Adam—not only was she sinless, but she was a perpetual virgin.

This was held in 553, in the sixth century, and it was actually made dogma in the seventh century at the Lateran Council of 649 under Pope Martin I. This dogma of perpetual virginity states that she was a virgin before Jesus' birth.

That is accurate, by the way; Matthew 1:25 clearly indicates that she was a virgin.

The Council in 649 states this doctrine: listen, she was a virgin during Jesus' birth.

What does that mean?

Quote: Mary gave birth in miraculous fashion, without any opening of her womb and injury to her body, and without pains.

Now, without getting very descriptive about that kind of thing, let me simply say this: they cannot allow a sinless Mary to have any wound or any injury to her physical body whatsoever.

So the dogma says Jesus came out in some miraculous way without ever coming through the birth canal, because that would have created some injury to her perfect body.

This is not some obscure doctrine; I have read this in numerous places.

She was a virgin, it's true, before His birth.

They want to make her a virgin even during the birth.

That's kind of a strange approach to virginity, but the absolute untouched, unscarred, unwounded body of this goddess, to them, is important.

And then, most importantly, that after Jesus' birth, she remained a virgin for life.

This is what her perpetual virginity is all about.

Schreck, in The Basics of the Faith, a Catholic catechism, says, Out of respect for the fact that God Himself had dwelt and grown in her womb, she remained a virgin all her life.

All her life!

This, of course, is utterly contrary to what Scripture says.

Matthew 1:18 states, The birth of Jesus Christ was as follows.

When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child.

What does that tell you?

Before they came together means at some point they came together.

How hard is that?

Things are so utterly obvious.

1 Corinthians 7 says that if she withheld her body from her husband, she sinned.

1 Corinthians 7:3-5 states that it's a sin to withhold yourself from your husband; your body is not your own, it is your husband's, even as your husband's body is not his, it is yours.

Matthew 13:55 asks, Is not this the carpenter's son?

Is not His mother called Mary, and His brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?

And His sisters?

Are they not all with us?

Everybody knew Mary had sons and daughters.

John 7 talks about Jesus' brothers not believing in Him; later they did, after the resurrection.

What does the Roman Catholic Church say about this?

They say they were all cousins, even though none of those passages uses the word anepsios, which is the word for cousin.

Whenever it refers to the brothers, it uses adelphos, which means brothers.

So you have these strange doctrines: the Immaculate Conception, which means conceived without sin; perpetual sinlessness, which leads to the obvious perpetual virginity.

At the end of her life, we come to what they call the fourth of their important doctrines concerning Mary: the doctrine of the Assumption.

You may have heard of that—the Assumption or the Ascension.

This doctrine didn't find a place in the actual canon of Catholic theology until 1950. It was on November 1st, 1950, that Pope Pius XII made it official that Mary ascended into heaven.

Quote: The bodily assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven is a dogma of the divine and the Catholic faith.

Born without sin, lived without sin, lived as a virgin, and left this world by ascending.

Now, this idea about Mary, though it really wasn't formally dogmatized until the 20th century, goes way, way back.

You start to read about this in the 5th century as paganism and pagan goddess worship get mingled.

Remember the Holy Roman Empire, as it was called?

The Holy Roman Empire was really not holy; it was Roman for sure.

But the emperor in 325 decided that the best thing to do to unify the great empire was to make everybody automatically a Christian.

Since the empire was rife with paganism, they just married a kind of Christianity with paganism.

All of this came very early, so it's in the rule of somebody who calls himself Galatius I, a self-appointed leader of the Church in the 5th century.

At that time, there was a discussion about Mary being assumed into heaven.

So already, this goddess cult had imposed itself on poor Mary, and it was at first considered heretical.

There was no evidence for it historically; there’s no evidence for it biblically, obviously.

The earliest appearance of this idea is in a very apocryphal work, an unreliable work like the Gospel of Judas and hundreds of others.

It was called Transitus Mariae, and it was in the fifth century.

It was denounced as a heresy.

So when it first showed up in the 400s, it was denounced as a heresy.

But things began to develop over the years in regard to Mary.

Praying to Mary arrives in 600, 400 or 500 years later.

The rosary comes into play in 1090. But it's not until 1950 that this original idea, which was considered to be a heresy—that Mary was assumed into heaven in an ascension—finally becomes dogma.

One of the modern-day apologists for Roman Catholicism is a man named Carl Keating.

Carl Keating is very aggressive in defending Catholicism, particularly going after evangelical Protestants who are ignorant and unwitting and are easily victimized.

Carl Keating says this in his book Catholicism and Fundamentalism, which will tell you where he's directing his efforts at advocacy for the Catholic Church.

Carl Keating writes, As something definitely true is a guarantee that it is true.

That’s Carl Keating, probably one of the two or three leading apologists in our day for Roman Catholicism.

If the Church, commanded by Christ to teach all nations infallibly, says it’s true, then the fact that the Church says it’s true is a guarantee that it’s true.

Catholic theology says that Mary went to heaven intact to reign and to take possession of the Kingdom of Heaven.

There are hymns to Mary at her death.

Here’s one: Uplift the voice and sing, The daughter and the spouse, The mother of the King, To whom creation bows.

Praise to Mary, endless praise.

Raise your joyful voices, Raise praise to God who reigns above, Who has made her for His love.

When Mary lingered yet in exile From her Son, like fairest lily Set mid thorns of earth alone.

And then the chorus: Praise to Mary, endless praise.

To be with God on high, Her heart was all on fire.

She sought and asked to die With humble, sweet desire.

At length, her heavenly spouse, Who loved her with such love, Invites her to repose With Him in heaven above.

Praise to Mary, endless praise.

Raise your joyful voices, raise.

De Liguori writes on page 144 that at her ascension, purgatory was emptied out; whoever at that moment was in purgatory was released.

So you have those four very, very strange and unbiblical ideas about Mary.

To deny any of them, to deny any official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, is to be anathematized, condemned, and damned, and from the Church's viewpoint, excommunicated.

Those four have considerations for her earthly life: she came in sinless, she lived sinlessly, she lived as a virgin, and upon death was immediately assumed into heaven.

Now, that puts her into heaven, and we turn the page to talk about how the Catholic Church views her role in heaven.

The first four relate to her life here; the next relate to her life in heaven.

I want to be careful about this, and I want to be somewhat detailed because it's so important that you understand this and that we make sure the sources are indicated.

Let’s make this number five in our list.

The first four relate to life here; the next relate to life in heaven from the Catholic view.

The first thing you want to know about Mary in heaven is that she is immediately identified as the Mother of God and the Queen of Heaven.

Look what we got on page 211 of theology: Mary’s right to reign as Queen of Heaven is a consequence of her divine motherhood.

She is ever and always the Mother of God, the Mother of God, the Mother of God.

A very, very misleading statement; a very unbiblical statement.

She, in fact, dominates the whole Church calendar.

There are, and I counted them with my fingers over the Catholic calendar, about 50 annual feasts and festivals devoted to Mary—42 of them on set days and five of them are variable, starting in January and running through December.

There are 47, to be exact, feasts and festivals devoted to the Mother of God and the Queen of Heaven.

It was John Paul II who dedicated himself and his pontificate to Mary.

He is the Pope who was just replaced.

His personal motto, Totus Tuus sum Maria, means I am all yours, Mary.

On October 8, the year 2000, before the image of Fatima, a supposed appearance of Mary, the Pope stood before the image of Fatima and consecrated the world and the new millennium to his personal and heaven's own queen, whom he called Mary Most Holy.

Pius XII, again the same one we mentioned earlier, put forth this statement, Ad Coeli Reginam: The Blessed Virgin Mary is to be called Queen not only on account of her divine motherhood but also because, by the will of God, she had a great part in the work of our salvation.

In this work of redemption, the Blessed Virgin Mary was closely associated with her Christ.

So she deserves to be called the Mother of God and the Queen of Heaven.

It was Newsweek magazine, in August 1997, that said Mary has changed the Trinity into a holy quartet.

Mary is viewed as the spouse of the Holy Spirit, the mother of the Son, and the daughter of the Father.

Even an outsider looking in can see that she is treated as a fourth member of the Godhead.

Where did this idea of Mother of God come from?

So misleading, as if God had a mother who gave birth to Him?

This was first used by Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, in the fourth century—goddess worship at the very outset.

The Holy Roman Empire comes into existence in the fourth century.

Early in the century, this Mother of God comes in rapidly.

By the year 431, at the Council of Ephesus, and in 451 at the Council of Chalcedon, it is established that she is to be called the Mother of God.

This contributes to centuries and centuries of accumulated deification of Mary; she becomes equal to God.

And though the Church tries its best to wiggle out of this and deny it, the truth of the matter is she really is portrayed as superior to God and superior to Christ, as becomes very evident in what they say and in how they portray her in cathedrals all over the world.

She rules in heaven as queen, sovereign, saving, sanctifying, and sympathizing.

All this power is given to her that belongs only to God.

Again, it's Carl Keating, who’s trying to sell the Catholic faith to fundamentalists, who says, God's grace is not conferred on anyone without Mary's cooperation.

Number six in my list, as to how the Catholic Church views her, is not so much a dogma, but it is an experience of Mary that is so widely accepted and acknowledged that it's as good as a dogma.

Let’s just call it apparitions.

Mary keeps appearing, have you noticed?

She keeps appearing.

She descends from heaven to earth to make herself known to people.

She comes quite frequently, and she always comes with secret messages.

She comes with secret messages for very isolated people.

She came to Benoit near Liège in Belgium in 1933; she appeared eight times to an 11-year-old peasant girl.

She came again to Banneux in Belgium in 1932, which was really about the same period of time, starting in 1932 and ending in 1933. She appeared 33 times to five little children in the garden of a convent.

She came to Fatima, which, by the way, I should have said earlier, is in Portugal.

She appeared there six times in 1917 to three children in a field.

Fatima is north of Lisbon.

She also came to Guadalupe, Mexico.

She appeared four times back in 1531 to an Indian by the name of Juan Diego on a hill outside Mexico City.

She came to La Salette, France, appearing as a sorrowing and weeping figure again to two peasant children.

She came to Lourdes—you've probably heard about Lourdes in France—identifying herself as the Immaculately Conceived Mary, affirming the Catholic doctrine.

She appears 18 times between February 11 and July 16, 1858, all 18 times to a 14-year-old named Bernadette Soubirous.

She appears at a grotto near Lourdes, which again is in southern France.

She appears three times in 1830 to Catherine Labouré in the chapel of the mother house of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in Rue de Bac near Paris.

Those are just a few that come out of the Catholic almanac.

She comes a lot; she comes quite regularly.

In fact, the apparitions are presently becoming numerous.

The latest Pope, Pope Benedict XVI, previously known as Cardinal Ratzinger, noted this in 1984. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the head of the Roman Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—where he came from as the doctrinal gatekeeper of Roman Catholicism—declared, One of the signs of our times is that the announcements of Marian apparitions are multiplying all over the world.

He made this observation as a comment on the many reports of the appearances of the Blessed Virgin Mary to individuals located in a wide variety of countries, cultures, and political systems.

In fact, the last century and a half has seen numerous appearances of the Blessed Virgin, they say, and they have received official approval by the Roman Catholic Church.

You may remember some of the Catholic mystics of the past.

Elizabeth von Schönau, for example, had Mary appear to her; she lived in the 12th century, and Mary appeared to her repeatedly.

Mary also appeared to another woman, Anna Katharina Emmerich, at the end of the 18th century and into the early 19th century.

She kept appearing and appearing, and there’s a lot written about these two mystical women and all the appearances of Mary.

One wonders why the Lord Jesus never bothers to get equal time.

He’s definitely losing the popularity contest because He never shows up, which reinforces the whole Mary deal, as Jesus seems to be indifferent to everybody while Mary is so sympathetic.

She always shows up in obscure places and talks to peasant people.

She's certainly a lot more lovable than Jesus through these apparitions.

According to one writer, Mary has called Catholics to repentance, to perform acts of penance, to pray the rosary for the conversion of sinners, and to pray for peace in the world.

She has asked Catholics to give themselves to greater devotion to her under the titles of her Immaculate Heart and her Immaculate Conception.

That sinlessness is the Immaculate Heart idea; the Immaculate Conception and the Immaculate Heart—when you think of Catholicism, you think of the Immaculate Heart, don't you?

That's something they portray constantly.

You see a picture of Mary with a great big huge heart.

Religious practices have also developed as a result of these appearances, such as the wearing of the miraculous medal and scapular medal, both of which bear images of Mary.

In one appearance, supposedly to Pope John XXII in the 14th century, Mary is said to have instructed Catholics to wear the scapular, which consists of two squares of cloth, often bearing images, connected by string and hung around the neck.

Mary promised Pope John that Catholics who died wearing the scapular in honor of her would be delivered from purgatory on the first Saturday after their death.

So if you want to get out of purgatory the first Saturday after you die, you spend your whole life—because you don't know when you're going to die—with that scapular around your neck.

Each year, 55 million Roman Catholic pilgrims visit Lourdes; almost that many go to Fatima and to the Cathedral of the Virgin of Guadalupe near Mexico City.

In Central Europe, the primary focus of Mary's appearances and pilgrims' attention is the Shrine of Our Lady of Sestakawa, a wooden icon of a Black Madonna dating from the 14th century.

The best known, however, is Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Mary supposedly appeared to six peasants almost every day starting in 1981. Over 10 million Catholics have gone there, hoping to drink in some of whatever happens when Mary has been someplace.

A book in 1993 documented about a thousand appearances of Mary: 30 times in the 18th century, 200 times in the 19th century, and 450 times in the 20th century.

So they are escalating at a rapid rate.

Cardinal Meisner claims that Mary brought Christ to Europe from Fatima, and one would ask, where was He before that?

If she brought Him, she visited a farm in Georgia, an office building in Clearwater, Florida, and a subway wall recently in Mexico City.

She comes so often, and she comes to the down-and-out, to little children, and to peasant people.

This validates the fact that she is this loving, sympathetic, merciful, tender-hearted, compassionate person.

Let me read you from apparitions.org,

commenting on the Medjugorje phenomenon: Since the apparitions began in 1981 at Medjugorje, millions of people of all faiths from all over the world have visited Medjugorje and have left spiritually strengthened and renewed.

Not sure what the dynamic is there, but countless unbelievers and physically or mentally afflicted individuals have been converted and healed.

Our Lady continues to give messages to six young people from the village of Medjugorje: Ivan, Jakov, Maria, Mirjana, Vicka, and Ivanka.

These six young people, referred to as visionaries, have had apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary since June 24, 1981. In addition to these messages, Our Lady is to give each of the six visionaries a total of ten secrets or happenings that will occur on earth in the near future.

Only one of the secrets so far has been revealed by the visionaries; there are nine more to go.

Our Lady has promised to leave a supernatural, indestructible, and visible sign on the mountain where she first appeared.

When each of the six visionaries has received all ten secrets, Our Lady will stop appearing to them on a daily basis.

Currently, Maria, Vicka, and Ivan have received nine secrets, and Our Lady still appears to them every day, wherever they are, at 5:40 PM during daylight savings time and at 6:40 PM the rest of the year.

Mirjana, Jakov, and Ivanka have received all ten secrets, and Our Lady appears to them once per year and will do so for the rest of their lives.

So they’re all moving toward having all ten, and each of them has ten for a total of sixty.

When they all have them, the Virgin is going to write something on the mountain that’s going to affect the whole world.

The only person—if there is someone really appearing to them—is right out of hell.

This is demonic, for sure, for sure, for sure.

But what assurances and what cleverness the demons offer for the deceived and the damned with their hellish counterfeits.

Well, there’s more.

Here’s a seventh and very important doctrine regarding Mary.

This has swirled around in Catholicism for a long, long time: this is Mary as Mediatrix.

Mary as Mediatrix, or Mediatress if you will—either one is correct.

Mary is that channel of all divine grace through which God touches people.

Listen to the Catholic Church's official statement by Ludwig Ott: No grace is conferred on man without her actual intercessory cooperation.

On page 212, it states that Mary's sublime dignity as Queen of Heaven makes her supremely powerful in her maternal intercession for her children on earth.

She intercedes to God and Christ to get the grace for whatever we need, and it never comes except by her intercession.

De Liguori says on page 159, We may be afraid to go to God because it is His infinite majesty we have offended.

Mary has nothing in her to terrify us.

And that’s the bottom line: Mary is harmless, compassionate, and tender.

Don't go to God; He's tough.

Don't go to Jesus; He's harsh and never shows up, so He’s indifferent.

Go to Mary.

That’s the system.

And so Satan has diverted all these people who say they worship God and Christ into an inordinate worship of Mary.

The Roman Catholic Catechism, page 252, number 969, states: Therefore, the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the titles of Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix.

She is the chief and sovereign refuge of Catholics in their trials.

Here is a statement called Supreme Apostolatus, a Catholic document: The Catholic Church has always and with justice put all her hope and trust in the Mother of God.

She who is associated with Him in the work of man's salvation has favor and power with her Son greater than any other human or angelic creature has ever obtained or ever can obtain.

The point is you go to Mary because Jesus can't resist Mary, and Mary, because she’s so merciful, can't resist you.

Mary claims the Church can persuade God to grant what He otherwise wouldn't grant.

Another Roman Catholic document states, All men, you’re really banging on steel if you go to God yourself.

Go to Mary, and He listens to Mary.

Fausto Appententi, another Roman Catholic document, says, St... Dominic knew well that while, on the one hand, Mary is all-powerful with her divine Son—just remember that she is all-powerful with her divine Son, who grants all graces to mankind through her—on the other hand, she is by nature so good and so merciful that she is inclined to aid spontaneously those who suffer.

She is absolutely incapable of refusing her help to those who invoke her.

The Church is in the habit of greeting the Virgin as the Mother of Grace and the Mother of Mercy, and so she has always shown herself, especially when we have recourse to her by means of the Holy Rosary.

You see, Roman Catholicism is pagan goddess worship, completely distracted.

God is reinvented as judgmental and harsh; Christ is reinvented as indifferent.

Everybody worships Mary.

Listen to what Superiore Anno, another document, says about God: We have a confident hope that God will at length let Himself be moved and have pity upon the state of His Church and give ear to the prayers coming to Him through Mary.

Pope Pius XII taught, While Peter has the keys of heaven, Mary has the key to God's heart.

When she turns the key, the Church guarantees the lock will open.

Another Catholic document states, We could not find a more powerful protectress or one more irresistible before God.

She is for us the best of mothers, our safest confidant, and in fact, the very motive of our hope.

She obtains all she asks for, and her prayer is always heard.

Another quote: Mary is all-powerful with her divine Son, for she is the mighty Mother of God.

In Tonto Studio, another document states, For while the prayers of those in heaven have certainly some claim on the watchful eye of God, Mary's prayers place their assurance on the right of a mother.

For that reason, when she approaches the throne of her divine Son, she begs as advocate, she prays as handmaid, but she commands as mother.

Who is this person?

Who is this?

This is a false god.

Mary is even given the power to save us.

When praying the Hail Mary, Catholics say, Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, asking Mary to extend salvation.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says this: By asking Mary to pray for us, we acknowledge ourselves to be poor sinners.

We address ourselves to the Mother of Mercy, the All-Holy One.

We give ourselves over to her now in the today of our lives, and our trust broadens further already at the present moment to surrender the hour of our death wholly to her care.

May she be there, as she was at her Son's death on the cross.

May she welcome us as our mother at the hour of our passing to lead us to her Son Jesus in paradise.

Is this some kind of a movement among ignorant people?

Is this some kind of a commoner's movement?

I don't think so.

There was a day in the life of John Paul II—a frightening day for him—when he was shot in the stomach by Mehmet Ali Agca, a psychopathic terrorist and a convicted murderer.

This 23-year-old Turk had a 9mm Browning automatic pistol, and he was in St. Peter's Square when he fired at the Pope and hit him.

A friend caught the falling Pope and heard him pray, Mary, my Mother!

Mary, my Mother!

The biographer says that plea was still on his lips 15 minutes later when he passed out at Gemelli Hospital, with dropping blood pressure threatening his life.

He was immediately administered last rites.

St. Peter's Square was crowded with people.

Some went to the throne of the Pope and placed a picture on the throne.

The picture was of Mary, and on the back of the picture was written, May Our Lady protect the Holy Father from evil.

Immediately, the rosary was broadcast over Vatican loudspeakers.

By 8 o'clock, the Pope was stable and confident, quote, that God had heard Mary's plea for his life.

The crowd began crying.

This is not some uneducated commoner's view; this comes right from the top.

Going back a little bit in John Paul’s history, after the death of his mother when he was eight years old, his real name, Karol Wojtyła, developed at that very early age an intense devotion to Mary because that was part of the whole system.

When he became Pope in 1978, he formally rededicated himself and his whole pontificate to Mary.

In his travels as Pope, he constantly visited the Marian shrines, and they’re all over the world.

He made devotion to Mary the primary focus of his prayers and the primary emphasis of his own personal devotions.

He had a crest that John Paul II used as his coat of arms.

On the central part of that crest was a huge M for Mary.

When he died, his coffin was decorated with this large letter M, signifying what he had said so many years before: I am totally yours, Mary.

In notes included in his will, he quoted the words of a former Polish cardinal that had inspired him: Victory, when it comes, will be through Mary.

Anyone who follows at all the preaching of John Paul could see his intense devotion to Mary.

On Wednesday, May 7, 1997, John Paul said, The history of Christian piety teaches that Mary is the way that leads to Christ.

He wrote a book called John Paul II's Book on Mary.

The ad copy inside the book says it’s a book for people who seek a deeper relationship with Jesus and His Mother.

The table of contents in the book lists all the titles that John Paul credited to Mary: Gate of Heaven, Mediatrix of All Graces—which is what we're talking about—Mirror of Perfection, Mother of the Church, Mother of Mercy, Pillar of Faith, and Seat of Wisdom.

Here’s a sample of things from the book: Mary shares our human condition but in complete openness to the grace of God.

Not having known sin, she is able to have compassion on every kind of weakness.

She understands sinful man and loves him with a mother’s love.

Precisely for this reason, she is on the side of truth and shares the Church’s burden in recalling always and to everyone the demands of morality.

Another time he said, For every Christian, for every human being, Mary is the one who first believed, and precisely with her faith as spouse and mother, she wishes to act upon all those who entrust themselves to her as her children.

It is well known that the more her children persevere and progress in this attitude, the nearer Mary leads them to the unsearchable riches of Christ.

If you ever want to get to Christ, you’ve got to go to Mary.

And I ask again, who is this?

This is a satanic fabrication; this is worshiping demons.

He says further, As Christians raise their eyes with faith to Mary in the course of their earthly pilgrimage, they strive to increase in holiness.

Mary, the exalted daughter of Zion, helps all her children, wherever they may be and whatever their condition, to find in Christ the path to the Father’s house.

He said nobody else can bring us, as Mary can, into the divine and human dimension of the mystery of the Gospel.

He said we can turn to the Blessed Virgin trustfully, imploring her aid in the awareness of the singular role entrusted to her by God—the role, listen to this, of cooperator in the redemption, which she exercised throughout her life and in a special way at the foot of the cross.

Now that’s a pretty bold statement.

She is not only the Mediatrix of all grace, the channel through which all grace...

Comes the one to whom we go for everything, but she is even involved in our redemption.

Leo XIII said that according to the Church, Mary is God's unique channel of blessing; God grants all graces to mankind through her.

Benedict XV affirmed that she is the seat of all divine graces, an almost infinite treasure to whom the Church exhorts the faithful to flee in time of need.

I could go on and on with all of this, but I think you get the picture.

The Church says nothing comes to us except through Mary's mediation, for such is God's will.

The Church states that Mary is the most powerful Mediatrix and Advocate of the whole world with her divine Son.

Hail Mary!

One of the prayers of the rosary says: Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy!

Hail, our life, our sweetness, and our hope!

To you do we cry, poor banished children of Eve.

To you do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.

Turn then, most gracious Advocate, your eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of your womb, Jesus.

O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary, pray for us, O Holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

This is what De Liguori said, reaching way back: Mary was made Mediatrix of our salvation—not a Mediatrix of justice, of course, but of grace.

He says she has been made the ladder to paradise, the gate of heaven.

That’s what John Paul II called her: the most true mediator between God and human beings.

De Liguori says God decreed all graces through her hands.

He said Mary is the source of every good and the absolute master of all graces.

And again, Ott, the Roman Catholic theologian, states, No grace accrues to men without the intercession of Mary.

Veritatis Splendor from John Paul II says she is the mother who obtains for us divine mercy.

There are two more verses that I need to talk about, but you’ve endured a lot.

I think what I’m going to do—and this is probably wise—is finish this next Sunday night because there are only two more, but there are a lot more pages in my notes.

I would be unfaithful to the duty that is mine if I didn’t also, at the end of all of this, go to the Word of God and take a real biblical perspective.

I understand next Lord's Day is Easter Sunday, but next Sunday night we had planned a Q&A. However, this is much more important, and we’ll wrap this up next time.

In case you’re wondering what the remaining two are, I shouldn’t tell you; I should make you come.

But because I want to be kind, I’ve already suggested one: that she is Co-Redeemer with Jesus.

And the final one, equally shocking, is that she is the source of eternal merit.

She not only participated in our redemption, but she was so much more holy than she needed to be that she had more holiness than she needed, which is now available to sinners for a price.

This gets us into the whole idea of selling indulgences—selling the excess righteousness of Mary.

That’s what infuriated Martin Luther and launched the Reformation.

Having looked at those two, we will then look at the Word of God and what it has to say about worshiping a false god.

And so, Lord, we feel like we have seen Satan's throne.

It’s frightening and terrifying.

What is equally tragic is how many unwitting people want to embrace this system as if it were true.

These people who are in this system are worshiping a false god, violating the first commandment.

They have another god.

It was God Himself who said, You shall have no other god before Me. They are worshiping a goddess by Satan's design, who obliterates the truth of Christianity and leaves only meaningless vestiges of Christianity, corrupted by demonic tradition.

We say all this in love, from a clear conscience and a sincere faith, because the truth matters.

It matters more than anything else.

It matters more than people being happy with us or liking us or having, quote-unquote, a good relationship.

Truth matters more than anything because what you do with the truth of the Gospel determines your eternity.

We would be unfaithful and unloving in the worst way if we weren’t willing to confront error as error.

We trust that the attitude with which it’s been dealt is one of stern concern and, at the same time, genuine love.

People need to be rescued from this system.

It doesn’t need to be identified as if it were Christian.

This is idolatry—blasphemous paganism of the worst kind—because being mingled with Christianity makes it even more deceptive.

Help us to find ways to bring people away from this who are caught in it to Christ, where alone salvation lies.

Anyone trusting in Mary for salvation has polluted the Gospel, and whatever it is that they look to Jesus for is inadequate because He demands all our faith, all our affection, all our trust, and all our hope to be placed in Him and Him alone.

So use this, we pray, in the lives of those who have heard it, who will repeat it, and who will yet hear it down through the years as this message is repeated.

We acknowledge again the blessing of having the truth and knowing the living truth, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.

Amen.

You've been listening to John MacArthur, Bible teacher with Grace to You.

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