From The Coming Home Network International Publications

http://chnetwork.org/2011/07/arthur-and-teresa-beem-from-prophetess-to-pope/

Not my best picture.... but doesn't my hubbie look sweet ?

Arthur and Teresa Beem – From Prophetess to Pope

July 7, 2011

From Prophetess to Pope

Arthur and Teresa Beem

Arthur

In silent horror, I listened to my Seventh-day Adventist pastor’s mini-sermon as I watched blood trickle down the little Boy Scout’s leg. After crashing his bicycle, the boy had timidly approached our picnic table. In a weak, shaky voice he begged, “I lost my group. Could you catch me up to my group?” Seeing this as a “teachable moment” my pastor responded to the young lad by gently putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Saturday is the Sabbath,” the pastor said with an enlightened smile and began a short homily explaining why the fourth¹commandment kept us from helping him. However, he offered to pray for him. To this day, I am baffled as to why the pastor refused the Boy Scout, unless it was the Adventist taboo of riding bikes on Sabbath. That experience symbolized my frustrations growing up in the SDA church.

As a cradle Adventist, there were so many unexplainable taboos I had grown up with. On the Sabbath we couldn’t play with the neighbors, swim, go to the store or mall; no television or radio. A sampling of the list I’ll entitle, Adventist’s Iniquities, (any day of the week) included dancing, drinking, smoking, going to the theater, eating meat, drinking coffee or anything with caffeine in it, and wearing jewelry. Drinking root beer was our family’s version of walking on the wild side (it contains no caffeine but it looks like Coke).

However, Adventists evidently believe God sanctioned imitations of evil. Adventists are well-known for their substitute meats. My mother would spend hours in the kitchen making a gray, gelatinous mass of whole-wheat gluten as fake beef. My parents would drink a hot, black liquid substance called Postum, which kids would tease was “bad to the last drop.” Any jewelry dangling from your ear or wrist or neck was scandalous, but if it could be pinned onto your blouse it was endorsed.

Adventism, to me, was not only confusingly hypocritical but scary. Some Adventist doctrines are based on the visions supposedly given by an angel to a 19th-century prophetess and one of the founders of the Seventh-day Adventist church, Ellen White. According to my childhood church, heaven opened up to her a crucial new addition to the Gospel—called the “Everlasting Gospel.” In fact, White calls it the most important message of all time². According to her Revelation 14 prophecy, Adventists are the sole remnant of God and the 144,000. They are then given the task of proclaiming the three angels’ message (vs. 6-12).

First and foremost, they must warn the world that Christ’s Second Coming is imminent (which they have been broadcasting since 1844.) After that, the Sabbath issue dominates their doctrines. Ellen White’s messages, affectionately dubbed “The Spirit of Prophecy,” teach that very soon laws will be enacted that will force a great crisis between those who only profess to be Christians and genuine Christians. God’s dramatic test between His false and true people pivots upon which day of the week you go to church. Those who fall prey to the antichrist’s strong delusion and receive the mark of the beast are those who worship onSunday. Truly obedient Christians will become Seventh-day Adventists who attend church on the authentic Sabbath—Saturday.

The disturbing and bizarre twist to their prophecy is that Christians who attend church on Sunday³ will become the Whore of Babylon, seize national power, and enact laws that force all people to attend church on Sunday. Then in a drunken madness this spiritual prostitute will track down, torture, and kill Adventists who do not succumb to her demands of worshipping on the false Sabbath. Guess who the Adventist church claims will spearhead this coming barbarity against them? The Catholic Church. Adventists earnestly work and pray for the pitiful souls who have been deceived by Rome⁴.

Our SDA Bible teachers showed pictures of the pope and pointed out the “pagan-inspired, Devil’s horns of his mitre.” Using only denominationally published theology books, they warned of the dangers of stepping outside of the church. When I finally was old enough to ask a coherent question about our doctrines, I received no biblically backed answers that made sense without quoting Ellen White.

Once, on a rainy day, my neighborhood non-Adventists (but Christian) friends invited me to go bowling with them. Excited, I naively asked my mother if I could go. She shot my dad a deflecting glance, “well, ask your father.” Giving the same answer I am sure my dad was given by his parents, he responded, “I don’t think that is something we want to do.” To my inquiry of why, his answer was typical, “Ellen White speaks against it.” That was no real answer, but I had been taught to respect, or at least obey, anything she wrote. Even if my dad had personal concerns himself, which I doubt he did, he would never have breathed them aloud. He was the principal of the SDA church school I attended and not only would spend thirty years of his life as a teacher, principal and eventually an Educational Superintendent, he also would become an ordained minister of the Adventist gospel.

With my upbringing, I could easily have become like many of my SDA friends: bitter and angry. I had a total lack of spiritual intimacy with God or a church. Although I had never gotten an accurate description of who God was, in my heart I was holding out for a God of love.

Our Blessed Lord decided to teach me about selfless, passionate, intense love when I met my stunning wife in an Adventist boarding school in south Texas. He gave me the love of my life to teach me of His love for me. But it was going to take a while for God to get through. The beginning of marriage was tough. I was unbelievably selfish. But the Lord worked through my patient wife who was the consummate pantomime of the Lord’s sacrificing love. Yet still remaining in spiritual confusion, one Saturday I just stopped going to church. In fact for a while I told my wife I did not know if I could even believe in God.

In my thirties, I finally came to my own personal age of enlightenment. I had gotten to the point that I wanted some answers, not just for myself but for my young children that were looking to me as their father and priest of the family. And, like before, I received none through the SDA church.

My uncle David founded a Biblical Research Institute that recorded eschatology studies on audio tape. At the time I was doing sales on the road and would listen to several of the tapes each week. Some of his research was truly profound and listening to these tapes showed me that there might be another way of reading the Bible. Ellen White just may not have known what she was talking about. In one tape, “The Law,” David’s systematic explanation of God’s law in Scripture was the first time I realized it was based in love. God’s law was not a tool to kill you with but a tool He fulfilled to save you. I was struck like a lightning bolt. I had to pull over to the side of the road because I was weeping so profusely.

After this lightning bolt, I started to read C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity and A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of Man. I never knew that there was flesh on those old dry bones of religion. For the first time, between my uncle David, Lewis, and Tozer I earnestly studied spirituality. It was like these writers poured the wine of the Eucharist upon my tortured mind and it exploded to life. As God’s grace was transforming me, my wife had reached the same point but from a completely different direction.

Teresa

It was as if, until that moment, I had been a merry, floral-crowned damsel tossing rose petals through the air as I skipped through my Pre-Raphaelite, bucolic life—when I was hit by a Mack truck. In shock, with my emotions plowed into the ground, I pondered how my whole life had been a lie. But then the thoughts turned even darker; my parents’ lives had also been based in fiction. Then the circle grew wider—my grandparents, my teachers, my pastors. Oh, it was just too painful to even think about.

You see, I loved serving my precious Jesus through the Seventh-day Adventist church. My family had been part of this church for so many generations we were not sure when they had been converted. In fact, we had become cultural Adventists or cafeteria Adventists—who would pick and choose the doctrines and rules we personally believed and roll our eyes at the rest.

Our family were the “cool” Adventists. We openly drank Dr. Pepper to the gasps of the orthodox, and watched Disney movies—in the movie theaters. (I was told by my teachers that I would be in trouble if I mentioned that fact in school.) You would see our family eating out at a restaurant every Sabbath. Though we wouldn’t have thought of leaving the church, our family had proudly thrown off the shackles of what we considered silly, hypocritical teachings. Oh, I don’t want to mislead you. I still believed that Jesus was coming soon and looked for evidence of it in every newscast. Sincerely and earnestly I had wanted to be obedient to Christ and I assumed keeping Saturday as Sabbath was keeping His commandments. With all its blemishes, I was proud to be one of God’s chosen people, part of the remnant spoken of in Revelation. After all, it made one feel special to know that one’s denomination was God’s elite.

Because I was an “enlightened” Adventist, I saw myself as the future of the church and was devotedly active. I sang in the choirs, wrote for its publications, taught in its schools and Sabbath morning study groups. Then, in the mid 1990’s, life had become busy as a homeschooling mother of three and time with the Lord in prayer and Bible study had dwindled. For the first time in my life, new temptations doggedly pursued me. I felt God calling me back to Scripture, but once there, the illusion of my life and my worldview of truth was shattered. There wasn’t a shred of biblical evidence to support Adventist unique doctrines. Adventists had woven texts into Ellen White’s prophecies, rather than build doctrine upon the Bible alone. It wasn’t that I hadn’t read the Bible before; indeed, I could win any biblical trivia game I played. It was confusing. I stomped the ground in a tantrum to God and reminded Him that as a good Protestant I knew Scripture by heart. I knew Scripture… I knew Jesus, He was my best friend! “Don’t change the rules on me now.” Yet knowing my yearning for truth, God lifted the veil from my eyes and showed me that I had been living in delusion. I could see for the first time how Adventist doctrine was not just wrong, but even spiritually dangerous.

No matter how painful it was to tear myself from my culture and indoctrination, I knew I could no longer support a church—as sweet and well-meaning as it was—that taught beliefs that were not based in authentic history or Scripture, that taught spiritual fear and elitism. So, I went to my husband to break what I thought would be horrifying news.

Arthur and Teresa

Sitting staring at each other, we both were thinking the same thing, “How do I say: ‘Honey, I don’t think I’m an Adventist anymore.’” God gave us the grace to tear off our religious facade and words began to pour. We had never spoken so candidly about our spiritual life. We went from parallel paths to one miraculously united with Christ.

In 2001 we formally placed our resignation letter on the desk of our pastor. As we left his church office, Arthur’s hand steadied me for I felt a bit faint. My life had just fizzled away quietly like a wet fire cracker. There was no wake, no funeral, and no public grieving for my loss. Yet, in that moment Christ ignited a new spark that would later turn into a bonfire of joy.

Arthur felt pleased we had made a gracious and respectful break. Even more, he was startled at his feelings of exhilaration—like fleeing a dry desert for the ocean. Since we lived in an Adventist community Arthur did detect some guilt thrust in his direction by the condemning gaze of Ellen White in the eyes of some church members. He missed by inches the brushes that were attempting to paint a “scarlet A” (in this case meaning “apostasy”) on his chest. In apologetic desperation, I stayed close to my family and friends vainly attempting to prove to them we had a basis for leaving.

Soon we were eagerly worshipping and studying with other Protestant denominations, so happy to be awash in our newfound brothers and sisters in Christ. Within a few months we began to discover a real problem in choosing our own church. Oh, it’s easy if all you are looking for is an inspirational service. There are so many wonderful, joyful, and fulfilling communities of Christ to which you can feel like you belong. (I just left one!) The problem comes when you want your church to be based in biblical truth. We had spent a lifetime dedicated to a church who had indoctrinated us into fiction, so we were understandably hesitant to repeat that same mistake. Fearing deception, we spent years grilling pastors about their doctrine.

Every single denomination out there claims its beliefs are the most Bible-based. One pastor proof-texts infant baptism, while the pastor down the road proof-texts adult baptism—quite confusing. Theologians dueled with the original languages claiming that really, if we could read Greek, the Once-Saved-Always-Saved position would be ridiculously clear or just ridiculous—depending on which scholar we asked. One pastor with two Ph.D.’s in theology insisted that if we could, “acquiesce to neo-orthodoxy’s ontological and soteriological exegesis of justification through the feminist theological worldview we would become at peace with our post-modern epistemological quest.”

I looked at Arthur and whimpered, “what?” Then we went home and sent off for applications to all the different US seminaries. We decided, in order not to be deceived we had to be able to read the Scriptures in their original form. Arthur and I became consumed with theology. It seemed the more we knew, the more we realized that it would take every second of every waking hour in theological study for the rest of our lives to begin to know all this stuff. …Wait… I had to take a shower …and fix dinner… and phone my mother…I was running out of time! It was devastating to realize that to really avoid deception and know truth, we would have to be… God.

The thought terrified us. My Protestant friends all told us to relax, all we needed to understand Scripture was the Holy Spirit. Yet, we knew there were false prophets (Ellen White!). As sincere Christians, how could we guarantee that we would not fall prey to false doctrine again? Had God abandoned us to correctly, infallibly interpret Scriptures with nothing but our average IQs?

God sent a Catholic friend to introduce a revolutionary idea. He cut through our despairing cloud of confusion with a new inquiry. “Perhaps you are asking the wrong question. Maybe, just maybe, instead of finding what you think is perfect theology, try looking for the church God set up as His authority.” That haunting statement changed our lives as we took it to Christ in prayer and study.

For years, we had watched an online Catholic-Protestant discussion group, but we had dismissed the Catholics’ defense of their faith because it was too biblical. We thought it was just another plot of deception. We had been warned about online Jesuit plants—tricky papist spiders—drawing the web into their ultimate antichrist designs. We purchased a Catechism to find out if the tricky papists were lying about what Catholics believe. After all, what they were saying wasn’t what we had been taught they believed. Yet there they were! Catholic beliefs! Just as the Catholics claimed—in the Catechism, the Catholic Encyclopedia, history books, and everything else we could get our hands on to read. So Arthur and I immersed ourselves in our new quest of discovering real Catholicism.

As my husband and I began reading the early Church Fathers, we were shocked at how Catholic they were. Could it be Catholic corruption had already been trickling in before the Apostles died? But that cannot be right, can it? These early writings were not just by any convert; these were writings by bishops who had been taught by, anointed by, and chosen by the Apostles themselves to lead the churches they started. That just didn’t seem to make sense that they would have become apostate so soon. If God had abandoned His Church so quickly after its inception, then we really have a problem because we can’t trust the Trinity doctrine, the canon of Scripture, or the divinity of Christ because these were the men (and later Fathers) who defined these doctrines and who attested to which writings were by the apostles and which were forgeries.

So we either had to believe God protected His Church’s theology, or we have to cut the Church off right after its birth. Is it possible that these godly men, who were martyred for their faith, could have gotten it that wrong? In the end, we had to admit, that their writings didn’t actually conflict with Scripture; their writings were in conflict with our personal interpretation of Scripture, or rather I should say, the way we had been taught to interpret it.

After acknowledging Adventists had disseminated error about Protestants, it was not impossible to accept the idea that Protestants disseminated error about Catholics. Christ was now opening up a frightening, exciting, new worldview of Christianity for us.

It was about this time that Arthur and I published a book called, “It’s Okay Not to be a Seventh-day Adventist” (Amazon.com). It lays out the history and doctrine of the Adventist church, comparing and contrasting it with Scripture and supporting former SDAs in transitioning into mainstream Christianity. After leaving that church, we had been contacted by numerous hurting Adventists who needed someone to whom they could talk. Many were terrified of Ellen White’s last-day prophecies and were afraid to go to other churches for fear of being deceived. Since we had been down that same road, we could sympathize. So God handed us a ministry for them.

As the book was announcing to the SDA world that we had left Adventism, we had a new announcement they would find even more horrifying. We had finished the RCIA program and now, after intense study, we were entering the Catholic Church. Not that we understood the doctrines perfectly, but we began using an acronym, BEAU, believing that if every other doctrine within Catholicism wasn’t true, it just didn’t matter if they got these things right. (Now, we are discovering all the other doctrines, including Marian Dogmas are not only breathtakingly true, but biblical.)

BEAU (the French male form for “beautiful”—apropos for Christ):

BIBLE: We were shocked to discover that for 1600 years the Bible was more extensive; that Reformers took out unwanted books. Contrary to Protestant teaching, the Catholic Church protected Scripture with her life, copied, translated and transmitted it. We realized that Sola Scriptura was not biblical but was a Protestant tradition and that the Bible actually points to the apostles and the Church as the foundation of truth (Eph. 2:20, I Tim. 3:15).

EUCHARIST: We eagerly embraced the clearest scriptural meaning that God’s body was actually miraculously present in the Holy Communion endowing us with special grace. Coming before Him at mass, experiencing the love at the cross, becoming one with Christ through the Eucharist, we delighted in knowing these things are not figurative, not just a symbol, but really living the Kingdom of God.

AUTHORITY: As we analyzed our culture, we saw the crumbling of western society because of the lack of authority. The rebelliousness of children, divorce, sexual promiscuity, abortion—at the root, all are a rejection of God’s sovereignty. Nature attests to a hierarchy of leadership; Israel was structured around their appointed authorities; is it possible we had missed this in the New Testament? Again, we had been blind to an obvious part of Scripture. Repeatedly the apostles command Christians to submit to God’s appointed authorities even when they were less than perfect.

UNITY: Finally, as we read Jesus’ fervent desire that His disciples remain unified, we recognized there was something distinctly unscriptural about all the different denominations. Scriptures did not allow for sects. Christ stresses unity more than many doctrines Protestants deem “essentials.” Indeed, unity is an essential of faith. We had to ask ourselves if Protestants had a biblical basis to break with the Church. The answer was no.

It is difficult to express our duality of grief and exhilaration in the first two years of being Catholic. We have learned obedience to Christ brings unfathomable joys. There is no honor in heaven or earth like giving undying fealty and faithful love to the Savior and His Bride. It is thrilling to be a part of this historical, triumphant Church.

God has given us many surprises. Becoming Catholic has improved our marriage. Through participating in the Eucharist, we have gained a penetrating insight of the privilege of sacrificing for our spouses. As Christ broke Himself for us, we then also give of ourselves, fully, unreservedly, tenderly to our spouses. Our rights fade away in the glory of offering ourselves to each other.

We have understood our own irreplaceable importance to God as we study the Catholic Church’s doctrines on life and birth control. No longer are we, as we felt in Protestantism, an army of one. We find great relief as we drink from a vast two-thousand year reserve of living water from the immovable Rock that Christ founded upon Peter and the Apostles. We relish the safety of the Church’s treasury of faith and communion of saints. We delight in knowing that God is changing us from glory to glory and erasing the original sin that stained our souls. Pain no longer elicits confusing questions of offending God: now we lift up our sorrows in redemptive suffering. We no longer fear other Christians nor do we see ourselves pridefully as God’s elite.

And yet our decision to follow Christ into the Catholic Church has left our Adventist families heart-broken, fearing for our sanity and with some, even worse, believing we are traitorous to the Gospel. We humbly ask your prayers that one day our families’ hearts will be open to this blessed of all faiths. For truth heals the deep pains of false beliefs. We thank each one of you who faithfully prays for unity and for little straying lambs, like we were, to find our way home into the Roman Catholic Church.

Arthur and Teresa Beem were both raised in the Seventh-day Adventist Church and attended their schools from elementary through the University level. Arthur is a travel nurse and Teresa writes as she travels with him. Their three college-age children are on the East Coast, way too far from their parents who are currently in the state of Washington. The Beems attend the beautiful St. James Cathedral in downtown Seattle. They run a ministry for former Adventists and would someday love to be involved in the RCIA program helping other Protestants to understand the beauties of the Roman Catholic church.

The Joys of Monotheism

I AM A MONOTHEIST!! (giggle, clap, smile, "yeah!")

Finally! Whew.

I had no idea how this had weighed on me all these years. Cognitive dissonance doesn't usually red flag itself in your subconscious. It is like a strange pain you get used to and ignore. Then one day you take an Advil and realize that you feel GREAT! You weren't even aware you had been carrying this pain around until it is gone.

Hallelujah! Beethoven you have given me a song to sing.

Several people have explained the Trinity doctrine lately in comparison to the doctrine I had grown up with. And I don't know if the Seventh-day Adventist church taught me wrong or I just wrongly understood their doctrines. But I have always thought deep down that Christians were really polytheists and wouldn't admit it.

When my husband and I had decided to be missionaries to Egypt, (right before 9-11 and the state department discouraged us from going) I was trying to figure this subject out. This is a huge issue with both Jews and Muslims. They consider Christians polytheists and I needed to know how to explain it so it made sense. Well, I couldn't. It didn't make sense. We were polytheists and just trying to excuse it.

BUT NO MORE!! I'm not saying I totally understand how God can be three in one. I am not there yet. I have, however, stepped up into a place where I CAN see the Catholic Dogma of the Trinity and understand it so much better than I ever did in my former religion. Wish there was a way I could express it in written words. God is one, expressed in three forms--all the same substance. I had always seen them as three separate beings, not truly united in one, but like three family members who thought alike.

No, that was not right. The Trinity is more Spirit than form, symbolized in the Cherubim angels. Not fully represented by the unity of man and woman physically in marriage, but their spiritual union. Yes, hard to explain and I am doing a terrible job.

I think repeating the Nicene Creed has also helped. "Begotten, not made", one in substance,  "True God from True God".... these words are making an impact and I love it.

Now God has taken the cognitive dissonance away and I feel as light as air. I feel like I just became a real Christian. But that is not new to me at all. Each day I awake and grab my rosary and pray the Divine Chaplet of Mercy and say the Nicene Creed, I feel like a new Christian.

Man, I LOVE being Catholic.

(Lady Dragon, I think you were one of those people who was discussing the Trinity that helped me. Thanks!)

As a Bride Adorneth Herself For Her Husband....

Some examples of the casual dress at Sunday Mass in North Carolina.

 This is just to show that flip flops are very common, even among older people. 

You can't see it, but this shiny gold shirt, worn by an older woman in the choir, has a T back and she has on a black miniskirt. 

Jean shorts and tank top blouse, this is NOT a teenager but a woman in her late twenties, early thirties.

This woman, in her late thirties, is a bit casual for church. The spaghetti straps  probably would be better at a backyard picnic.

You can see women in capri shorts and sleeveless shirts. Not immodest, but for Sunday Mass?

Yes, she is a teenager, about sixteen, but her parents should not have allowed short, short jeans and a t-shirt.  

Another example of the casual dress; grown men without shirts tucked in and shorts. Fine for a baseball game, but what are we saying about our respect for the presence of Christ in the sacrifice of the Mass? 

Bishop Burbridge needs to see these pictures. These are pretty tame examples of what we have seen and are by no means the worst. We have seen many college age girls wearing short short jeans and t-back t-shirts with bra straps showing. Women with strapless towel material dresses, like beach wear. Flip-flops, common. Nice shorts on men, okay--but with t-shirts, or shirts not tucked in? This is not just about modestly, it is about what we are saying to the world and our children about the respect we have for Sunday Mass.

I am certainly not upset at these people or necessarily blame them. It is our Protestant American culture that does not have the real presence but only a symbol who have begun this trend in casual attire for church. And that is okay for them, because church is a symbol. However, for Catholics, no way. What are we saying when we come before the King of Kings and Lord of Lord to partake in the holiest act of worship, the holiest consummation of Christ and His Bride with such flippant and unconsidered attire?

Just one more picture to leave you with, an older woman and her daughter, just as they were leaving church.

Idolatry and Symbols

The Protestant religious worldview is based upon Christian symbols. They suppose themselves to reject rites and rituals, but when it come to things of God, they are all about the symbolic.

To most Protestants:

• The Body of Christ is not a tangible, physical organization, but a conceptual fusion of sincere hearts. The Kingdom of God on earth is allegorical, not a organized, connected body--but somehow a blurry, abstract spiritually-connected group. This  spiritual connection is not specifically defined but assumed by many to be a belief in sola scriptura and sola fide--or, for the more simple minded--their love for Jesus.  

• Baptism is nothing more than a symbolic public confession that they have received Christ into their hearts. It has no intrinsic grace. There is no regenerated New Man as the death and resurrection with Jesus at baptism represents more of a legal exchange than an authentic "born again" experience. For a Protestant a person's new birth occurs with an experience--when a person asks Jesus to come into their hearts as Savior. 

• The Communion Bread/Eucharist is symbolic to a Protestant. And here is where we see the huge difference in worldview which affect our views of each other. 

In Protestant corporate worship, they come together to pray, sing praises and to listen to a sermon usually about a Bible text. Many imagine that their assembling together to worship brings a fuller presence of God than in their personal devotions at home. But from those I have encountered, many do not. They believe that God is no more at church, than He is in their private prayers and Bible study.

The very essence of Protestant worship and doctrines are:  spiritual symbols, spiritual thoughts, spiritual feelings, spiritual experiences that happen in their heart.

The symbolic even bleeds over to their actions. Many evangelicals and fundamentalists teach that a Christian should not expect any apparent sanctification in their lives. Moral growth and becoming holy is to them, again, symbolic.

So, all that to build my case:

When you see Christianity through the lens of the symbolic; when baptism, the church, spiritual growth and the Eucharist/Communion bread is all allegorical; when your highest form of worship is infused with symbols, then you see idolatry in Catholicism's symbols. 


When kneeling to pray to God is a Protestant's highest form of worship, they see idolatry when they see someone kneeling to a statue of Christ or Mary or another saint. They cannot fathom that to a Catholic kneeling is subsidiary to worship. It aids in worship but it is not worship itself, as throughout history and in almost all cultures one would bow to one's king, queen or local lord or even to one's family. The Bible is replete with these examples.

When prayer is the highest form of worship, Protestants see idolatry when they see Catholics praying to saints. They cannot fathom that to a Catholic praying is subsidiary to worship. It aids in worship but is not worship itself, as throughout history and in almost all cultures one would pray (or in today's language: petition) to one's king, queen or local lord. History is replete with these examples.

These actions ARE worship to a Protestant, the fullest expression of what humans do to worship. So when they see others acting in a way which represents their highest and most holy form of worship, they sincerely believe Catholics are idol worshipping.

What they don't realize is two-fold:

1. Catholics highest form of worship is not praying, praising, bowing or even studying God's written word. To a Catholic the sacrifice of the mass is the highest holiest form of human worship. Worship is the re-presentation of Jesus on the Cross to the Father. It is partaking of the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ in the Eucharist. All other things are worship aids--the music, the rites, the rituals, the candles, the stained-glass windows, the genuflecting and bowing, the reading of scripture, the prayers. All these things are not worship in and of themselves but are done to keep our hearts and minds upon the greatest and most holy act of all time:

Jesus on the Cross.

Coming before Him at the foot of the Cross and joining with Him in the sacrifice for our sins and those of the whole world, participating in the Last Supper with Him and joining our very bodies with Him in eating of His true flesh, that and that alone is the fullness of worship. (And that is why we keep Jesus on the cross in our crucifixes--always reminding us of what Jesus did for us at the Cross.)

Just as holding hands and kissing are not the fullness of marital consummation, but aids to bring two people together in the fullness of human intimacy, so bowing and praying, praising and Bible study are not the fullness of worship. As you can hold hands with your parents and kiss your siblings without committing adultery because you have not reached the fullness of consummation (and it was never a temptation to go there!) So we can pray/petition others, bow to them without even a hint of idolatry.

2. Secondly, what Protestants do not realize is that worship has for all history been participating in sacrificing to idols. The first commandment of God on Mt. Sinai:

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them..."

This making of an image and bowing down to serve it means, within the context of Hebrew history, sacrificing a living thing and sharing in a covenant meal with the god, who the pagan believed to be alive. They would bring them food and drink, they would consult the oracles as to what the idol told them to do or to find out predictions of the future.

Pagan worship was not symbolic! It was a true joining with the demonic spirit's soul through a covenant meal offering. They worshipped a piece of stone, or an animal--not by just bowing or even praying to them as symbols. But this "bowing and serving" was known to all as joining themselves to the idol through a corporate sacrifice of a covenant meal. That was why Paul kept bringing up eating meat sacrificed to idols in his letters to the different churches. Joining in a covenant meal with an idol was tantamount to adultery. Please, if  you don't believe me, do a Biblical study on what idol worship was in the Old Testament.

Idol worship wasn't symbolic, so Protestants misunderstand true idol worship because they cannot fathom a spirituality that is real, with a real Body of Christ in a real church, a real Eucharist and a baptism of regeneration.

The Fall of the Knights of Columbus

This is so disappointing to my husband and I. We were so looking forward to his joining the Knights soon.

Being Good

Little Richard, the fifties rock idol, came to the Dallas First SDA Church when I was a preteen and gave a titillating conversion testimony mostly recalling his wild and exciting fall from grace, which secretly inspired a desire in me to have such a theatrical repentance story. 

But then again... I would have to be that bad first! Something seemed wrong to me in the scenario that to have a really good testimony for the Lord, I would have to first ruin my life. 

Today, I see the American Christian culture, because of its fear of the “righteousness by works” mindset, concentrate exclusively on the negative salvation formula of:  God’s amazing grace saving a “wretch like me.” Of course, all of us find ourselves captive to sin and can rejoice greatly in a gospel that promises, “God demonstrates His own love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us," (Rom. 5:8). 

We seem totally oblivious to a positive and less destructive method in which a human can discover the love of God. 

It is not only through failing and repenting that one can grow in grace, but it is also through the struggle of winning over sin that we can come to a deep insight into what Christ went through on the cross for us.

Let me give an example. A husband, who has never been such a good guy, commits adultery and is truly repentant. He asks his wife for forgiveness and comes to know Christ’s love for him through his deep sorrow for this wicked act. An understanding seizes upon his soul of what Jesus did to save him from the eternal consequences of sin. And that is wonderful, praise God! 

But what about the wife who choses to freely forgive? Her agonizing humiliation by receiving back a husband who doesn’t deserve a second chance may be the experience where she gains an even deeper revelation of Christ’s sacrifice. By picking up her cross and following Him, she may grasp a penetrating first-hand cross experience. And what way to identify with another who has been through the fires of hell than by going through them yourself? 

Again, I wish to stress, I am not speaking of earning salvation, only becoming aware of Christ’s love for you. 

Both the act of selfish sin and the act of selfless love can be used to bring us to the Cross, flooding us with insights into the character of God.

May I suggest being good has gotten a bad reputation by Christians because we run from the idea that we can even be good and the fear of works-righteousness. But in the end, our lives will be a lot less miserable if we can find God in being good. 

Climate Change and Christianity

[The Lord] is about to deprive Jerusalem and Judah of resources and provisions -- all reserves of food, all reserves of water-  of hero, warrior, judge ... People will be ill-treated by one another, each by his neighbor; the young will insult the aged, and the low, the respected. For Jerusalem has collapsed and Judah has fallen, because their words and deeds affront Yahweh and insult his glorious gaze. Their complacency bears witness against them, they parade their sin like Sodom; they do not conceal it, all the worse for them, for they have hatched their own downfall. ... O my people, their oppressors pillage them and extortioners rule over them! O my people, your rulers mislead you and efface the paths you ought to follow!       Isaiah 3: 1- 9 selected (NJB)

Global warming a myth? Who really knows. But for Christians convinced that they will plunge the world into a new ice age or scalded desert from drinking bottled water, take a look at this text. Maybe it is not our overuse of natural resources that is causing weather catastrophes. 

Sounds as if God takes away our resources, not because we don't separate our aluminum from our glass trash for recycling, nor from failing to compost for our organic gardens.

Could global warming be directly related to our complacency? Our sin? 

Perhaps the problem stems from that fact that we have disdained God's original command to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Satan has twisted our science and used it to promote fear of overpopulation, defying God's instructions to procreate--so now we think we are doing the planet a favor by using contraceptives and murdering our children through abortion? 

The world is on the verge of collapse alright, but the earth is groaning and wrenching from its forced ingestion of toxic sin, not toxic waste. True Environmentalists need to break the yoke with which they have joined with Planned Parenthood and the radical left. If you want to save Mother Earth, love your neighbor, respect your parents, appoint judges who will bring justice, that our sins will no longer affront and insult our Holy God. The creation is crying out because of our sins, our complacency. The Creator is hearing..... 

3 Characteristics of the Diabolical....

This is truly interesting:

The video at the bottom of this post is of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. It is a fascinating excerpt from a longer video he did, where he analyzes the diabolical (anything of or relating to the Devil), from several different perspectives. In the excerpt I present, he identifies three characteristics of the diabolical by examining the story of the Gerasene demoniac, depicted in the synoptic gospels. Here is the story as Luke presents it:

They sailed to the region of the Gerasenes, which is across the lake from Galilee. When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demon-possessed man from the town. For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me!” For Jesus had commanded the evil spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places.  Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “Legion,” he replied, because many demons had gone into him.. (Luke 8: 26-30)

You will then recall how Jesus drove the demon(s) out and into the herd of swine.

From this story and also based on an insight from a psychiatrist of his time (the talk was given in the mid 1970s), Bishop Sheen sets forth characteristics of the diabolical:

1. Love of Nudity – For the text says: For a long time this man had not worn clothes.
2. Violence – For the text says: though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains. Mark 5:4 more vividly adds: For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him.
3. Division (Split Personality and divided from others) – for the text says, many demons had gone into him.Mark’s version has the demoniac reply My name is Legion, for we are many. (Mk 5:9). Further all the texts say the demoniac lived apart from others, in solitary places.

So here are three characteristics of the diabolic.

It does not take much analysis to see how these three characteristics of the diabolic are alive and flourishing in the modern world, at least the Western branch of it. Let’s consider them

1. Love of Nudity - This is clearly manifest at several levels. First there is the widespread tendency of immodest dress. We have discussed modesty here before and ought to note that modesty comes from the word “mode” referring to the middle or to moderation. Hence, while we want to avoid oppressively puritanical notions about dress that impose heavy burdens (especially on women) and regard the body as somewhat evil, we must also critique many modern forms of dress at the other extreme. These “fashions” reveal more than is reasonable and generally have, as their intent to draw attention to aspects of the body that are private and reserved for sexual union in marriage. Too many in our culture see little problem parading about in various stages of undress, wearing clothing that are more intended to disclose and call attention to, than to conceal the private areas of the body. This love of disclosure and titillation is surely an aspect of the Evil One’s love of nudity, and he has surely spread his obsession to many in the modern West.

Pornography, though nothing new in this fallen world, has surely reached epidemic proportions via the Internet. Any psychotherapist, counselor or priest will tell you that addiction to pornography is a huge problem among people today. Pornographic sites on the Internet outpace all others tenfold. Multimillion Americans are viewing enormous amounts of pornography and the “industry” is growing exponentially. What was once hidden away in adult bookstores is now one click away on the Internet. And the thought that browsing habits are easily discoverable matters little to the addicts of this latest form of slavery. Many are on a steep slope downward into ever more deviant forms of porn. Many end up at illegal sites before they even know what has happened to them, and the FBI is knoocking on their door. Satan’s love of nudity has possessed many!

The overall sexualization of culture also ties in to Satan’s love of nudity. We sexualize women to sell products. We even sexualize children. Our sitcoms chatter endlessly about sex in a very teenage and immature sort of way. We are, collectively, goofy and immature about sex, and our culture giggles like horny teenagers obsessed with something we don’t really understand. Yes, Satan loves nudity, and everything that goes with it.

2. Violence – We have discussed here before how we, collectively, have turned violence into a form of entertainment. Our adventure movies and video games turn violent retribution into gleeful entertainment and death into a “solution.” Recent Popes have warned us of the culture of death, where death is increasingly proposed as the “solution” to problems. In our culture violence begins in the womb, as the innocent are attacked and it is called “choice” and “rights.” The violence and embrace of death continues to ripple through culture through contraception, violent gang activity, easy recourse to war and capital punishment. The past Century was perhaps the bloodiest ever known on this planet and untold people in the hundreds of millions died in two world wars, hundreds of regional wars and conflicts, horrific starvation campaigns in the Ukraine, in China and elsewhere, genocides in Central Europe, in Africa and Southeast Asia. Paul Johnson, in his book Modern Times estimates that over 100,000,000 died in war and violent ways in the just the first 50 years of the 20th Century. And with every death, Satan did his “snoopy dance.” Satan love violence. He loves to set fires, and watch us blame each other as we burn.

3. Division - Satan loves to divide. Archbishop Sheen says that the word “diabolical” comes from two Greek words dia+ballein, meaning “to tear apart.” My own study of Greek, poor that it is, does not yield this result.  Rather dia means “through” or “between” and ballein means “to throw or to cast.” Nevertheless, the Good Archbishop was a learned man and I ask you Greek Scholars to set me straight and defend Bishop Sheen.

But, even still, it is clear that the devil wants to divide us, within our very own psyche and among each other. Surely he rejoices at every division he causes. He “casts things between us” (dia+ballein)! Diabolical indeed. And thus, we see our families divided, the Church divided, our culture and Country divided. We are now divided at almost every level: racial, religious, political, economic. We divide over age, race, region, blue and red states, liturgy, music, language, and endless minutia.

Our families are broken, our marriages are broken. Divorce is rampant and  commitments of any sort are rejected and deemed impossible. The Church is broken and divided into factions, so too the State, all the way down to the level of school boards. Though once we agreed on essentials, now even appeals to shared truth are called intolerant.

And within too, we struggle with many divisive drives and forms of figurative and literal schizophrenia. We are drawn to what is good, true and beautiful and yet what is base, false and evil also summons us. We know what is good, but desire what is evil, we seek love, but indulge hate and revenge. We admire innocence but often revel in destroying it or at least replacing it with cynicism.

And Satan dances his “snoopy dance.”

Three characteristics of the diabolic: love of nudity, violence, and division. What do you think? Is the prince of this world working his agenda? Even more important: are we conniving? The first step in over-coming the enemy’s agenda is to know his moves, to name them and then rebuke them in the Name of Jesus.

Thank you Archbishop Sheen. Your wisdom, God’s Wisdom, has never aged.

Pay attention to What the Good Archbishop has to say:

http://blog.adw.org/2011/07/three-characteristcs-of-the-diabolic-and-how-they-are-manifest-in-the-modern-world/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=three-characteristcs-of-the-diabolic-and-how-they-are-manifest-in-the-modern-world

Written by Msgr. Charles Pope Archdioceses of Washington