From Adventist To Catholic Confusion
I was raised Adventist and left because of the never-ending terror of The Last Judgement. As a teen I went to no less than four Revelation Seminars.
As you can well imagine, I’m a little shell-shocked by any sentence including “judgement” or “end times” or similar words.
Be that as it may, although I know Ellen was off the dot a lot, it makes me question the 11 zillion saints of the Catholic Church—St. Faustina in particular. [She was a Polish nun who was a mystic and who supposedly saw apparitions of Jesus and received messages of His “divine mercy”.]
All through her book she records her never-ending pleading with God/Jesus and His continually consoling her, calling her His wife, His child, His this and His that—endlessly.
And she talks Him into doing things! She records her wearying requests: “Ask and I will give it to you” kinds of things.
He’s the King of the universe, for crying out loud!
Furthermore, she emphasizes that the rosary is the divine mercy chaplet—[the prayer beads that help a person count and keep track of their prayers so they will gain God’s mercy and favor. The more prayers, the more answers a person may expect.]
St. Faustina strikes me as being heretical, but even the pope is gaga over her!
Why is SHE a saint when she seems to be mentally ill or possessed?
Did Padre Pio [an Italian priest who was also a mystic and who supposedly received “the stigmata”—the marks of Jesus’ crucifixion—in 1918] see demons nonstop? Did he have to beg and plead with God every moment of the day?
I don’t get it.
HELP!
Thank you.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: You are right to question an exaltation of any “saint”. The Lord Jesus said those who would believe in Him would do so through the words of His own apostles. Before he went to the cross He prayed for His disciples and said this:
“But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil [one.] They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, [are] in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.”—John 17:13–21 NASB95
Notice that Jesus stated that all future believers would learn the truth of believing in Jesus’ finished atonement from the words of His chosen apostles—the ones who wrote (or were directly involved with writers who knew and learned from them) the words of the New Testament.
All other sources presented to us as authoritative must be submitted to the scrutiny of the Bible, and any voice besides the divinely appointed voices of those who wrote the New Testament have to be understood NOT to be authoritative. Notice Hebrews 1:1–3:
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high…—Hebrews 1:1–3 NASB95
The Lord Jesus was the last Prophet through whom God revealed His provision for our salvation. No saint or extra-biblical prophet can come along with new information about worship or how to achieve salvation. God has revealed all we need to know through the Lord Jesus, and His apostles were appointed to write down for us the timeless words that reveal God’s provision for us.
You can let go of the compunction to read and believe the saints. They were never God’s appointed sources of His revelation and truth. The blood of Jesus has fully atoned for all our sin (and that’s past tense: the atonement is 100% complete), and His resurrection has broken the curse of death into which we all are born. When we believe in His finished work, we pass from death to life (John 5:24).
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Response to our response: THANK YOU!!!! Tears of relief sprang to my eyes when I read:
“You can let go of the compunction to read and believe the saints. They were never God’s appointed sources of His revelation and truth. The blood of Jesus has fully atoned for all our sin (and that’s past tense: the atonement is 100% complete), and His resurrection has broken the curse of death into which we all are born. When we believe in His finished work, we pass from death to life (John 5:24).”
I so appreciate hearing that! It just seems that the saints are so wound up into everything that I thought I had to read their stories and learn from them as well. The overwhelming amount of reading was getting to be too much!
Thank you for the links!!!
Thank you again! God bless you!
Response to Podcast: “Abraham Didn’t Keep the Ten Commandments”
That’s funny—“put down Ellen White”. I can prove all my beliefs without once quoting Ellen White. You quoted her, and I’m telling you, she’s not wrong. “I believe” and “I believe and act” are two different things. That’s my point.
If there’s no law, there’s no sin. My question to you is, did any one sin before the commandments were given? Noah knew the clean and unclean animals. The law was present already. In Hebrews it says God will write the laws in the heart, and the same words are in Jeremiah. This means that God takes the law from the tablet and puts it into the very being of the Christian.
—VIA YOUTUBE
Our response: You have to have Bible texts to support a claim that the “law”, the Ten Commandments, were present already. Without Bible texts to say so, you are merely stating an assumption. However, there are texts to prove that the Ten Commandments did NOT exist before God delivered them at Sinai: Romans 2:14; Romans 5:12–14; Galatians 3:15–22, and so on. What DID exist before Sinai was God Himself. He is the One who gave commands to the people He called, and He is the One who decreed that Adam and Eve died the day they ate the fruit and that ALL have died IN ADAM even without breaking a specific commandment (see Romans 5:12–14). God defines sin and death; we are born dead in sin (Ephesians 2:1–3). Even if we have not broken the law specifically, we are dead in sin. The law defines “transgression”—the specific breaking of certain commands, but even without the law, all mankind is by nature dead in sin. No written law is needed to determine that we are sinners. We are sinners even without the specific “transgressions” of broken laws. We are sinners by nature, not by choice (1 Corinthians 15:20, 21; Ephesians 2:1–3; Romans 3:9–18).†
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