Untitled Sermon (25)

Revelation 17:1–2 NKJV

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me, saying to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication.”

Revelation 17:15 NKJV

Then he said to me, “The waters which you saw, where the harlot sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues.

Revelation 17:3 NKJV

So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.

“In virtue of the promise of Jesus to Peter, the Pope is preserved from the possibility of error when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church.”

Exodus 20:4–5 NKJV

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,

“The Church did everything it could to stamp out such ‘pagan’ rites, but had to capitulate and allow the rites to continue with only the name of the local deity changed to some Christian saint’s name” (Edwin Goodenough, Religious Tradition and Myth, Harvard University, pp. 56, 57).

“the honor which is shown them [images] is referred to the prototypes which they represent, so that by means of the images which we kiss and before which we uncover the head and prostrate ourselves, we adore Christ and venerate the saints whose likeness they bear” (Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, Dec. 3–4, 1563).