By Walid Shoebat (Shoebat Sunday Special)
Many sola-scripturists insist that the Catholic Church killed one hundred million sola-scripturists and is why they do not trust the Catholic Church. These insist we must search the scriptures and only obey the scriptures.
But if I am to only obey and search the scriptures, then my first step is to search the scriptures for the word 'obey'.
So what do we find in the scriptures regarding obedience? Besides all the verses that says to obey God, God finally funnels such obedience towards "prelates" "magistrates" "bishops" and church authority. It is just as the Old Testament in ancient Israel funneled all theology to the realm of the Levites.
"Obey your prelates, and be subject to them" God says in the book of Hebrews (13:17). The reference here is to the religious and not civil authority (see Barnes Notes on Hebrews 13:17).
But even civil authorities, Paul in Romans 13:2 includes magistrates and he affirms this in a clear way:
"whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves." (Romans 13:2)
Therefore, everyone who says that you 'must obey scripture' is biblically sound, while everyone who has ever said that 'you must obey scriptures 'alone', by itself, and by applying their own foreign and personal interpretations, is not sound.
So all these Bible-aloneists go against God's ordinances and even scripture itself. It is God Who appoints the authority. So as long as authority does not infringe on your obedience to God, then obedience to such authority is obedience to God, while disobedience to such appointed authority is disobedience to God.
These short lines I wrote above should end all arguments. But they don't. Why?
The renegade insists on using scripture to determine who is this qualified authority and he is always crying out how corrupt the authority is.
But no matter how corrupt the authority is, we have ample and credible Church fathers whom Christians throughout the ages agree were competent and godly saints who correctly interpreted scripture.
But ask the renegade to obey these and you will instantly get the same circular reasoning: you must obey scripture alone because the authorities are corrupt, especially that the Catholic Church murdered a hundred million sola-scripturist saints.
But the argument still remains: our fathers correctly interpreted the scriptures. Even Christ, He never argued with the authorities knowledge and correct interpretation of scripture, He condemned them for their disobedience of it.
But this is the endless circular reasoning you will always encounter with millions of these 'blind leading the bind'. And by this faulty reasoning, the renegade has a goal. It is not 'scripture alone' he wants you to follow but 'him alone'.
He demands you obey him. He does this while he says that you 'must obey the scripture'. Reality is, he wants to isolate you to strictly obey his private interpretations of scripture.
Why such wolf are evil is simple to explain: the wolf by telling you to obey his interpretations, instead of the fathers interpretations, he masquerades as if he is God. These do not hate authority, they in fact love authority: them.
They are rabid blasphemers who claim they have a direct open-line to Jesus as if Jesus did not establish His church.
But who is then this 'authority' that scripture speaks of?
The bible-aloneist will always argue-100% of the time-of himself as the authority, his pastor, or a book he purchased, or a Youtube video, or a weblink to be such authority. He insists that you immediately need to review and follow his direction. He will instantly state that "Pope Frances is an environmentalist," and "the other pope before him was found kissing a Quran" and that "the Vatican is infested with gays and pedophiles".
And so when you address the "gay problem" by using the very scriptures, which he claims to 'obey' and you tell him: these according to the Book of Romans are "worthy of death". Civil authority historically used to punish the homosexual and all this 'love' without punishment simply crept in the last few decades.
Say that and these very 'scripture-aloneists' will be the first to turn on you. They say that "according to the New Testament we must love the homosexual" and not punish him.
Why then not also love the murderer instead of applying civil punishment? Therefore, by using such an argument we must then all become liberal activists carrying banners that say "united against the death penalty".
But you would never see sola-scripturists with a Bible in hand carrying such placards.
So even if you bring up the Bible, or even the Church fathers, these would still object arguing that the 'fathers' ordained the "killing of millions of sola-scripturist saints".
The Catholic Church, they say, is "drunk with the blood of the saints and the martyrs of Jesus Christ" (Revelation 17:6).
Such language is another clue that what you are dealing with here is a wolf in sheep clothing and not a saint. A rabid blaspheming wolf will rarely speak about the blood of millions of Catholics and Eastern orthodox who fought Islam. These will always elevate any heretical blood except the blood of apostolic-successon saints.
John MacArthur, for example, rejects the biblical discourses of the fathers and prefers the heretical groups as orthodox Bible expositors writing "While the period [12th-13th century] produced some famous preachers, such as Peter the Hermit, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Thomas Aquinas, none handled the text in an expository fashion. Faint hints of Bible exposition have been detected among independent groups such as the Paulicians, Waldenses, and Albigenses, despite the fact that these groups are commonly dismissed as “heretics.” (MacArthur, Preaching: How to Preach Biblically, ch. 3)
To further his defense of these 'heretics' MacArthur says that: "according to Protestant Historian John Dowling, the Roman Catholic Church has put to death more than fifty million of these “heretics” between A.D. 606 (the birth of the papacy) and the mid-1800s" (The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, John 12-21, P.p. 188)
HOW TO SPOT A HERETIC
ASK HIM ABOUT HOLY BLOOD AND EXAMINE HIS DUALIST DOUBLE MIND
It is always the case on how you spot the true heretic. To the heretic, only the blood of Catholics and Orthodox is rendered worthless, while the theology of the Manichean Albigenses including their blood is considered sacred-worthy.
And this is the case no matter who you deal with from that realm.
But you would never find these explain to their congregants who truly are these Paulicians, Albigenses, Bogomils, Manicheans and Cathars.
All These were Dualists. Their belief stemmed from the East, from a Zoroastrian named Mani (3rd century). After a pilgrimage to India, Mani came back to preach in Iran. Mani was visited by an angel: the Messenger of the light of Paradise, who asked him to proclaim his doctrine far and wide.
Manichaen/Cathar belief is itself a melange of Persian Zoroastrianism and early Christian Gnostic Dualism. The grandfather of dualist doctrines in Europe is Manichaeanism, which flourished in the early Christian era. It died out but dualism didn't. In the twelfth century a new strand erupted from the old: Catharism. This heresy invaded the West from the Balkans and festered in parts of France and Italy.
SCRIPTURE SAYS: Beware of a double minded man (James 1:8)
These dualists believed in two universal principles, a New Testament good God and an Old Testament violent bad God. This attitude, although sola-scripturists say they reject, yet once you dialogue with them, you will find out a similar duality and a similar 'double-mindedness' in much of what they say. Today these by large isolate the New Testament when it comes to the wars with pagans and heretics. They act as if Christ needed to repeat the Old Testament in the New. They isolate the two as if the Old is rendered worthless. This is why many require verses exclusively from the New Testament to prove a point to today's sola-scripturists.
Dualism is why today's sola-scripturist sees that an age of grace would mean that God prohibits wars. It is as if God changed His mind and so they condemn what the church did to the Cathars which was exactly what Joshua, Moses and Judas Maccabees did to combat rampant heresy, syncretism and paganism that went out of hand and gone violent where it only ended by war campaigns.
The God of the Old Testament changing His mind about punishing heresy goes against the theology that God does not change. God is the same today, yesterday and forever. This is why when one examines the theology of the fathers, they had no problem with Christian militarism or military expeditions to wipe out violent heretics. These saw the church continuing God's ways, that heresy, gone rampant and unchecked and allowed to fester by violence would destroy the whole batch. So unless it is met with complete annihilation, just as Moses, Joshua, David and Judas Maccabees did before them, it will end up destroying the whole structure of society.
Even historian Charles Lea had to admit: “Had Catharism become predominant, its influence would infallibly have proved fatal” (History of the Inquisition, I, 117).
But here is my Jesus-style question to all these sola-scripturists who love the Cathars: if the Cathars were so great, why do the liberals, evolutionists, Nazis, ecologists, environmentalists, satanists, agnostics, vegans (all anti-meat eating animal-rights activists) including the 'scripture aloneist' crowds are united in their veneration of the Cathars, while they condemn Catholic veneration of St. Mary?
Something is utterly wrong with this picture.
Nazis are usually vegan prohibiting meat. In fact Paul prophetically warned of the Cathars and the Manicheans prohibition on marriage and meat:
Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.
Yet the scripture-aloneists use this very verse to accuse "priests for remaining celibate" and "Catholic fasting" as fulfillment.
Have these forgot: the sacrament of marriage is a Catholic sacrament, not Protestant. Have these forgot, it was the Catholic Church that annihilated the vegans?
And what was Bogomil belief whom these defend: rejection of the Trinity, rejection of the Old Testament, rejection of the church hierarchy, rejection of sacraments, and the rejection of meat.
The rejection of church hierarchy is the language of all liberals, communists, agnostics, homosexuals, satanists, cultists including the pro-birth control sola-scripturists...
The Cathars and Albigenses, just like the sola-scripturists, they had no doctrinal objection to contraception but also believed in euthanasia and assisted suicide through starvation. They believed that all non-procreative sex was better than any procreative sex and that sexual intercourse between man and wife was more culpable than homosexual sex. And since the God of the Old Testament was the devil he committed homicide when he burned up Sodom and Gomorrah. It was easy-go on the sodomites just as we see happening today.
To them Christ Who was born in the visible and terrestrial Bethlehem, crucified in Jerusalem, was evil and that Mary Magdalene was his concubine; and that she was the woman taken in adultery while the good Christ, never ate or drank or took upon him true flesh since he was only in this world spiritually in the body of Paul.
But they have much in common with sola-scripturists saying that almost all the Church of Rome was a den of thieves; and that it was the harlot of which we read in the Apocalypse. This is where extreme Protestants got the idea from.
So the scripture aloneists would argue "why throw out the baby with the bathwater". They in fact agree with the Cathars on many issues. They, so far annulled the sacraments of the Church. They publicly taught that the water of holy Baptism was just the same as river water. That the Host of the Most Holy Body of Christ did not differ from common bread. Confirmation and Confession, they considered as altogether vain and frivolous. They preached that Holy Matrimony was meretricious, and that none could be saved in it, if they should beget children since salvation did not need to show the fruit of good works.
Like the Manicheans, the Cathars ate no meat, despised the ecclesiastical hierarchy, rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, and practiced chastity and poverty.
So you might think "chastity," why not? Didn't Paul talk about saints dedicating their lives to Christ instead of a spouse?
This is the utter hypocrisy one finds today where the youth (especially women) resent marriage while at the same time these condemn priests for celibacy.
And after all, Cathars valued the Scriptures and based their theology on their own interpretations instead of the Vatican's. They were, in fact, opposed to procreative sex because it brought other souls into what they viewed as a world of sin.
France and Italy between the 11th and 13th centuries had been infected with this dualist Catharism while spreading much violence and the church after decades of attempting to debate with it had to finally deal with it responding to Cathar violence just as the U.S. responded to Mormon violence. While the Cathars (like the Muslim apologists) rejected oath taking and violence in principle; they (just like the Mormons in U.S. history) conveniently hired mercenaries to do violence on their behalf.
Nice Mormons my foot. The Mormon Nauvoo Legion militia men at regimental muster, 1865. Imagine a cult starting civil unrest in your country. What would you do? Pass bouquets of roses to them in hope they love you?
No you fool. These are separatists who wanted to create their own state carving out swaths of lands within the United States for a Mormon-Nation
So at the time of all these insurrections, who should then be this 'authority' on matters of theology, morality and church guidance; the Catholic Church (authorities like Policarp, Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Rome — who knew the apostles personally) or the Cathars and their supporters who got their doctrines from Mani?
And just how many of these 'saints' did the Catholic Church kill? Protestants differ giving numbers in the millions. MacArthur refers to what he called "protestant historian" Dowling who gave the final tally:
From the birth of Popery in 600, to the present time, it is estimated by careful and credible historians, that more than FIFTY MILLION of the human family have been slaughtered for the crime of heresy by popish persecutors, an average of more than forty thousand religious murders for every year of the existence of Popery. (Dowling, Book 8, Ch. 1, pp. 542, 543)
Except that "John Dowling" was a Baptist “pastor Dowling” and not a “historian”. He held his pastorates in New York, Philadelphia. How could such a blooper enter many books without notice? A Baptist pastor Dowling wrote "The History of Romanism" and no one noticed the man was no historian?
Would any historian support such nonsense? No. Not one.
But MacArthur insists that there is a "Protestant Historian John Dowling".
This is no historian. MacArthur's statement was completely fraudulent.
In fact, there are no historians (zip not one) who would put there names on any of these books which circulated for centuries. People who read books by their favorite 'authority' do not know they are being lied to. Pastors write tons of books, and since there is no head authority, accountability is nil, and people who do not know history 'trust and obey' non-authority while they claim that they obey 'only' the Bible.
Except no one can find a single 'credible historian' who has ever given such outlandish estimates (50 million) and no historian would ever put their stamps on such books.
Yet these books do not disappear or die out. They always revive with modern covers. The only difference between the old writers and the modern ones is that the the old wrote with more skill saying the same slanders, while the modern simply wrote less words with more gloss to their book covers.
So how do these writers operate when discussing the so-called atrocities committed by Catholics?
This is how: imagine someone machine-gunning "U.S. military forces were directly responsible for about 10 to 15 million deaths during the Korean and Vietnam Wars" then it spilt over where "Vietnamese military and civilian deaths ranged from 1.5 million to 3.8 million" and then comes the results: "The overall conclusion reached is that the United States most likely has been responsible since WWII for the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people in wars and conflicts scattered over the world."
And then I would refer to the "list of wars by death toll" which reveals that during World War II we had "58,309,519" casualties of war and "34,016,173" deaths during the conquest of the Americas and then I tally all the way to "100,000–500,000 – Ugandan Bush War (1981–1986)"
And then I count how many Europeans they killed during the 1811 German Coast Uprising, World War I, World War II (1941–1945). And then I add in the white on white wars during the American Civil War and the Utah War with Mormons.
And then I conclude that America drank the blood of millions of saints.
But I still did not get my fill of casualties of war to blame it all on the Americans, and so I go on with pointing how many 'innocent' native Indians, Africans, English and Muslims who were killed by Americans. Than I even add in white-on-white killed during the American Revolutionary War.
So I start with the head-scalping pagan red Indians and so I count the Tecumseh's War, War of 1812, Creek War, Chickamunga War, Northwest Indian War, Black Hawk War, Apache Wars, Utah War, Navajo Wars, First and Second Cortina War, Paiute War, Texas-Indian wars, Shays' Rebellion, Whiskey Rebellion, Quasi-War, Dakota War of 1862, Colorado War, Arikara War, Winnebago War, Snake War, Powder River War, Red Cloud's War, Comanche Campaign, Modoc War, Red River War, Great Sioux War of 1876, Buffalo Hunters' War, Bannock War, Cheyenne War, Sheepeater Indian War, Victorio's War, White River War, Pine Ridge Campaign, Yaqui Wars, Moro Rebellion, Crazy Snake Rebellion, Bluff War and the last one the Posey War of 1923.
America was involved in many wars.
And lest I forget to throw in some Asians and Samoans. Americans after all participated in the Second Samoan Civil War, the Boxer Rebellion in China, the Shimonoseki War with Japan and the Formosa Expedition in Paiwan with the indigenous people of Taiwan and the United States expedition to Korea and the Korean War between 1950–1953. So lets add these.
And lest I forget the majors, the Vietnam War (1965–1973) and end it with the Communist insurgency in Thailand (1965–1983). This is just the orientals.
And then I count how many Catholics Americans killed during the Mexican–American War, Las Cuevas War, Garza Revolution, Rio de Janeiro Affair (Brazilians), Spanish–American War, Philippine–American War, Border War during the Mexican Revolution, Occupation of Nicaragua, the Occupation of the Dominican Republic, Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961) in Cuba, the Simba Rebellion (1964), Dominican Civil War (1965–1966), Invasion of Grenada (1983) and the Invasion of Panama (1989–1990).
And God forbid I forget counting the Orthodox Christians Americans killed during the Russian Civil War and Greek pirates in the Aegean Sea during the Anti-Piracy Operations, the Bosnian War (1994–1995), and the Kosovo War (1998–1999).
And to be frank America had no business in these last ones (the Bosnian and the Kosovo War) where president Clinton was involved.
And how about we throw in some black folks lest we get accused of racism. So we count all the casualties of the Negro Rebellion (1912) which was Part of the Banana Wars and then the Occupation of Haiti, the Sugar Intervention, the First Seminole War, First Sumatran expedition, Second Seminole War, Intervention in the Somali Civil War (1992–1995) and the Intervention in Haiti (1994–1995).
And God forbid we get accused of Isamophobia! So we also add in to our tally Muslims killed by Americans during the First Barbary War and of course lets not forget the Second Barbary War, Lebanon Crisis (1958), Multinational Force in Lebanon (1982-1984), Bombing of Libya (1986), Tanker War (1987–1988) with Iran, the First Gulf War (1990–1991), War in Afghanistan (2001–2014), Second Gulf War (Iraq War 2003–2011), War in North-West Pakistan (2004–present), Libyan Civil War (2011), War on ISIL/ISIS (Operation Inherent Resolve, 2014–present), War in Afghanistan (2015–present).
Would that be a just method to evaluate America's evils?
There is not a single sane scripture-aloneist who would agree with me on how I just evaluated history. No! Not one.
Why? Because this is how liberals argue. Such a tally removed the most crucial elements in evaluating good versus evil: intent, justice, the war on evil, the moral arguments ... and a litany of detail on why each war was fought.
In addition, few want to read a tome-like chronology of suffering or an encyclopedia of atrocities committed by their own kind and almost all of them primarily focus on Vietnam or World War II.
But only when it comes to the Catholics, things are treated much differently by Bible-aloneists since attacking and hating Catholics is the only accepted prejudice.
But when one compares this faulty reasoned 'American war crimes' to the rest of the world's history, such analogy is further destroyed and debunked. Take the first genocides that come up are the most famous; Turkey's Armenian Genocide, the genocides of Nazi-Germany when it controlled Europe, Japan's Nanking, Nazi-occupied Soviet Territories, Ukrainian genocide, Cambodian genocide, the Darfur and the Rwandan Genocide. Did America have anything resembling these? Never.
But don't stop there. Lets not forget that when atheism's Mao Zedong aimed to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a communist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization. The campaign caused the Great Chinese Famine resulting in 18 to 45 million deaths.
That last one, many would argue was a grand screw-up and communists call it a simple 'blooper'.
But the one that tops them all as far as death toll, some claim is that when Native Americans succumbed to diseases carried by European settlers. Some phony estimates indicate that some 80–90% died in Native American populations during smallpox epidemics. It is said that clothing and blankets known to be infected were given to the native peoples in a attempt to eliminate them. Some accuse that the colonists knew of the weakness the peoples had to disease and some estimates claim it to be up to 100,000,000 people in the largest genocide the world has ever seen.
And so now by such simple analogy, these pin-point America, as the worst leading offender when it comes to genocide.
And not to forget we already had calculated another 100 million in our previous tally (Indians, Samoans, Blacks, Whites, orientals, Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims) and the numbers are staggering, a whopping 200,000,000.
This beats the hell out of anything the Catholic Church has ever done in two millennia that is accomplished in two centuries of American history.
But here lays the dilemma with such an outlandish accusation; there is no smoking-gun proof that the white man attempted to spread disease during the American Revolutionary War or any of these wars with the native Americans. What we have is a plenitude of circumstantial evidence. Americans suspected the British were trying to infect their army with smallpox which was prevented. In most cases the evidence against the British is strong, if circumstantial but to claim that George Washington and the White House ordered the extermination of all Indians by disease is completely false.
But can anyone name me a single scripture-aloneist who would make such outlandish claims as I just did here about the U.S.?
Therefore, the issue is not that such writers are dumb, no, they are blatantly evil and like rabid dogs they give such analogies.
My faulty analogy is exactly the type of accusations that are constantly being hurled against Pope Innocent III and even against Pope Pius XII by the so-called scripture-aloneists. What 'scripture alone' truly means is to promote a history void of history.
These ignore that slander is a mortal sin even if it is against the Catholic Church. These, like the worst types of liberals, vehemently defend their position claiming that the Catholic Church annihilated 50-100 million 'Bible believing Christians' acting as if the Vatican is a giant battleship with canons protruding on top with secret guillotines and death camps hidden in its basements.
Yet no historian will agree with such outlandish numbers and accusations. Dowling himself even admits that “no computation” was done, that the only way to know is that “till the earth shall disclose her blood”.
In other words, there was no tally done. Yet an enormous number was provided despite that even the Protestant World Christian Encyclopedia says that Roman Catholics killed 4.9 million Christians. Of course, such source is referring to the dualist Manichaeans, Arians, Cathars, Priscillianists, Paulicians, Bogomiles, Albigenses, Lollards and the pre-reformation separatist Waldensians and Hussites claiming that all these are the best example of ‘Bible believing Christians’.
Eliminate these and you have nothing. This comes extremely short of how many Catholics, Orthodox and Mormons America killed during their wars which (whether right or wrong) dwarf anything the Catholic Church did. The “millions” figure is not supported by any historian of worth.
It is difficult to manipulate history without notice. This is why such authors including all their followers resort to theologians become self-proclaimed historians.
In fact, you can track any of the following names with their countless publications on so-called Catholic atrocities to only find out that the main sources for such false information were not credible:
Peter De Rosa (aka Neil Boyd) was not a historian but an X-priest novel writer and Professor of Metaphysics. John Wesley was not a historian but a theologian. Alexander Hislop was not a historian but a Pastor of East Free Church of Arbroath in Scotland. Schmucker was not a historian but a Professor of Theology. William Craig Brownlee was not a historian but a reverend and an American clergyman and professor of languages. Joseph Martin McCabe was not a historian but an x-Catholic priest. Charles Buck was not a historian but a reverend and author of Theological Dictionary. Vergerius was not a historian but a religious ‘reformer’. Thomas Armitage was not a historian but a Protestant theologian. George Bourne was not a historian but a pastor. Cushing B. Hassell was not a historian but a free writer. Dr. M. Geddes was not a historian but a Chaplain. John B. Wilder was not a historian but another 'free writer'. Taylor Bunch was not a historian but a Prophecy author. Nathaniel Crouch (pseud. Robert Burton) was not a historian but an another of these 'free writer'. Henry Southwell was not a historian but a reverend. John Wylie was a not a historian but minister of the Free Church of Scotland. J. M. Carroll was not a historian but a Southern Baptist minister. Avro Manhattan was not a historian but a British writer. Charles Chiniquy was not a historian, but a Canadian x-Catholic priest who was twice suspended from his priestly ministry (for moral turpitude). R. W. Thompson, was not a historian but a politician. John William Bowden was not a historian but theologian. Walter j. Veith is not a historian or a “world acclaimed international lecturer” but a zoologist. Frances L. Carroll, was not a historian but simply a housewife.
I could go on and on and on with every author who writes about Catholic genocide claims. Check them out for yourself.
Such is the type of references used by evangelical authors when they need to exaggerate historic accounts.
This is why they are against authority while they call for 'scripture alone'.
With no accountability by a higher order, evangelical authors can do as they wish under the first amendment. But as long as man is man, true science and ripe scholarship, and sound reasoning, can be only the heritage of the few.
But while it is difficult to manipulate history without notice, what should be more alarming is that history was manipulated by Protestants without notice by Protestants. Why?
This is a monumental fraud that is rarely discussed or is even debated between the two sides. Why? No protestant wants to touch their holy 'theologians' exposed on how these became 'historians'.
The reason that no Protestant touches the subject of 'historic fabrications' in a debate with Catholics is for three main reasons:
First, they know that they will lose the debate because when it comes to history, Catholics have the upper ground.
Secondly, Sola-scripturists do not construct their theology for the sake of theology but to simply attack Catholicism.
Thirdly, slandering and hating Catholics is the only accepted prejudice.
James White wanted to debate us once wrote "I will be happy to debate Walid in defense of Sola Scriptura, on the Papacy etc ..."
But when our reply was to strictly debate the falsification of history, the man knew he was outwitted and he immediately retreated. He knew he would lose. It is the subject they would never touch because these know that Sola-scriptura when examined in light of history becomes bunk.
What will they do when we will bring up pages 31-32 in These Three Angels by Jeff Wehr (another none historian) in a cross-examinationon? This one even inflates the numbers from 50 million to 100 million:
For professing faith contrary to the teachings of the Church of Rome, history records the martyrdom of more than one hundred million people. A million Waldenses and Albigenses perished during a crusade proclaimed by Pope Innocent III in 1208; beginning from the establishment of the Jesuits in 1540 to 1580, nine hundred thousand were destroyed; one hundred and fifty thousand perished by the Inquisition in 30 years; within the space of thirty-eight years after the edict of Charles V against Protestants, fifty thousand persons were hanged, beheaded, or burned alive for heresy; eighteen thousand more perished during the administration of the Duke of Alva in five and a half years.—Brief Bible Readings for Busy People , No. 8.
The source Brief Bible Readings for Busy People used by Wehr, as it turned out, was from an insignificant booklet titled A Brief Bible Studies for Busy People (page 16), which was written by one named Frances L. Carroll.
Carroll wasn’t even a historian but a housewife.
You heard it right.
It even gets worse, she was a housewife doing Jehovah’s Witness witnessing from door to door serving with her husband as full-time volunteer traveling ministers (see link here).
Well hello there. We are your neighborhood historians. Did you know the Catholic Church murdered 200 billion people and that there are only 144,000 saints alive on earth?
Carroll, the housewife, simply plagiarized Dowling’s quote and simply inserted her own “one hundred million”.
Now lets compare what real historians say. After all America decided to uproot the Mormons who became a menace when Joseph Smith swore by the "Quran" and "the Sword" to annihilate his enemies and his own countrymen. America had enough of it and uprooted the buggers.
Edward Peters probably one of the foremost expert historians on the subject revealed; the Manichaeans whom the protestants defend were vegans who madly believed that even a fig contained the divine, that it wept when it was plucked, and that after it was eaten one would belch out “particles of God.” They were not allowed to eat eggs, to drink milk, to clear a field of thorns, nor did they eat any animal meat because they believed, like the Hindus, that other souls passed into cattle. They also did not kill animals to avoid offending “the princes of darkness who are bound in the celestials.” (St. Aug. Confessions, 3.18; Concerning Heresies; The sermon of Cosmas the Priest against Bogomilism, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority, ch. i, pp. 36-7, ch. iii, p. 114) They partook in openly pagan activity, worshipped the moon, the sun, and the stars, even went so far as to pray to demons. (St. John of Damascus, On Heresies, 66)
Life itself was considered by the original founder, Mani to be an abomination from which all of humanity should seek to be free. Couples within the cult were told never to conceive offspring, and forbade the propagation of offspring, since this would bring more life into the world. So immense was their hatred for life, that they said that to bring food to a starving human being who was not a Manichaean was to murder the food itself. (St. Aug. Confessions, 3.18; Concerning Heresies, ch. 46, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority, ch. i, p. 37)
They were a cruel bunch, and saw themselves as superior, paralleling the self-exalting spirit of Islam. Like Muhammad, Mani intermixed his heresy with pagan traits; his followers prayed toward the sun in the daytime and toward the moon in the evening. (Augustine, Concerning Heresies, ch. 46, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority, ch. i, p. 38)
The antihuman doctrine of Mani spread to Armenia where its subscribers called themselves Paulicians. (See Skylitzes, Byzantine History, 5.8) The Paulician sect then made its way to the Balkans where it influenced a man in Bulgaria named Bogomil, who would start his own cult in his country. The Bogomils fabricated their own gospel called “The Bogomile Book of John,” in which Jesus tells John that God the Father, pitying the devil, gave power to Satan to create the world, and even to create human beings.
Bogomilism went underground, it continued to grow like bacteria multiplying in static murky water in the summer heat. Like the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, whenever the Bogomils met someone who they desired to deceive, they flooded the man with all sorts of politeness to undermine his vigilance. As the heretics of America do today, the Bogomils also did not hesitate to call themselves Christian. A certain priest named Cosmas preached a warning on this deceptive polite fiction:
The heretics in appearance are lamb-like, gentle, modest and quiet, and their pallor is to show their hypocritical fastings. …The people, on seeing their great humility think that they are orthodox, and able to show them the path of salvation; they approach and ask them how to save their souls. Like a wolf that wants to seize a lamb, they pretend at first to sigh; they speak with humility, preach, and act as if they were themselves in heaven. Whenever they meet any ignorant and uneducated man, they preach to him the tares of their teachings, blaspheming the traditions and orders of the Holy Church. (The sermon of Cosmas the Priest against Bogomilism, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority, ch. iii, pp. 109, 114, ellipses)
But under all of that feigned kindness, was a roaring devil filled with foaming hatred against Christ. They denied the Trinity, called John the Baptist “the forerunner of Antichrist,” and harassed Christians with words such as these: “How can we bow to the cross? Is it not the tree on which the Jews crucified the Son of God? The cross is detestable to God. …Christ neither gave sight to the blind, nor healed the lame, nor raised the dead, but these are the only legends and delusions which the uneducated evangelists understood wrongly.”
They rejected any honoring of Mary, hated all church icons, and declared with the utmost sacrilege: “We reject David and the prophets. We admit only the gospel; we do not cary out our lives according to the law of Moses, but according to the law given through the apostles.” (The sermon of Cosmas the Priest against Bogomilism, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority, ch. iii, pp. 110, 112, 115, 116, ellipses mine)
In accordance to the teachings of Mani, whenever a Bogomil would see an infant they would turn away, spit, and cover their faces, since they believed that babies were “little devils.” (The sermon of Cosmas the Priest against Bogomilism, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority, ch. iii, p. 114)
They hated the rich and the tsar of Bulgaria, yet they did not hesitate to take the property of their followers; for that is what heresy desires: power and to replace the Church.
By the twelfth century the cult made its way to the richest and most central part of Catholic Europe: Central France, where its followers would adopt the Manichaean title of Cathars, from the Greek word “pure.” (Augustine makes mention of a sect within the Manichaeans called “Catharists” in his Concerning Heresies, ch. 46, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, in p. 35)
It entered southern France when two heretics named Peter of Bruys and Henry entered the land and began to preach Catharism. The natives were so angered by their errors that they seized Peter and burnt him alive. But still the preaching of this heresy continued, and the community was allowed to grow in numbers without any significant intervention on the part of the Church to stop its growth.
Like Mani and the Bogomils, the Cathars forged their own bible called “The Catharist Bible.” In this damned book, it says that Jesus was not the eternal Son of God, but only one spirit out of innumerable other spirits in Heaven, Who chose to become the Father’s son after deciding to endure suffering. It also says that John the Baptist was a devil who baptized Jesus:
Then, seeing this, the holy Father said: “So then there is not one of you who desires to be My Son?” Then one of the spirits standing by, who was called Jesus, rose up and said: “I myself am willing to be the Son of the Father and to complete all things which are written in that book.” …After baptism by the great demon John, the devil carried Jesus hanging on his neck. (Catharist Bible, 4-6, ellipses mine)
And just like the Quran, it then goes on to say that Christ never died, but that only His death was an illusion to the Jews. It reads that “it seemed to the Jews that the Son of God was dead and that after death they had placed him in a sepulchre, nevertheless he was not truly dead, nor was he buried, though he seemed to be so.” (Catharist Bible, 18)
As the Manichaeans before them, they believed in the existence of two creators, one good and the other evil. The God of the Old Testament, they believed, was the devil and a “liar”, they also called him a “murderer” because of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the flood, and the slaughter of the Egyptians through the Red Sea. They called the Law of Moses “evil” because of its intolerance toward depravities and heresies, and they considered Joshua, David, and Moses, as advancers of the evil god, or the devil. Cathars held the deity of the New Testament as the good God, and for this reason they rejected the Old Testament, and their bible would only be a copy of the New Testament. (Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, 1.10-12; 2.28, 52, brackets mine; Belloc, The Great Heresies, The Albigensian, pp. 72, 76-7; The sermon of Cosmas the Priest against Bogomilism)
And for those who may say that these accusations have no merit because they are from Catholic documents, here are the words from an actual Cathar book:
Our opponents [i.e., the Catholics] say that according to Genesis the Lord is the creator of the visible things of this world … But I say that the creator of the visible things of this world is not the true God. And I prove this from the evil of his words and deeds, and the changeableness of his words and deeds as described in the Old Testament. (In Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, ch. iii, document 22, B, p. 135)
These blasphemous haters of truth deemed John the Baptist as one of the chief devils; they hated Christ and called Him “evil”, and libelously said that Mary Magdalene was His concubine (with this they agree with Mormonism), and that the true Christ was the one who appeared to St. Paul, since He came in the spirit and not the flesh in His visitation.
Marriage was evil, and like the Muslims and Mormons, wine was forbidden. Like the Mormons, they most sacrilegiously said that God had two wives and even begat children with them. And also like the Mormons, they believed that Jesus was the brother of Lucifer. Similar to the teachings of Muhammad, they also denied the Incarnation. All of these beliefs led the Cathars into some very dangerous activities, such as magic and even open devil worship. (See Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, 1.10-12; 2.28, 52, brackets mine; Belloc, The Great Heresies, The Albigensian, pp. 72, 76-7; The sermon of Cosmas the Priest against Bogomilism; A Standoff at Lombers, 1165; Ranier Sacconi: A Thirteenth-Century Inquisitor on Catharism. These last three references are in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority, ch. iii, pp. 109, 111, 112, 114, 117, 132)
A sect of the Cathars, called Publicans, were said to worship a demon named Luzabel who they believed “presides over all the material creation, and all things on earth are done by his will.”
They also made “execrable sacrifices” to this devil. (Ralph of Coggeshall, The Heretics of Rheims, in Alan Charles Kors and Edward Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, part 2, p. 81. That the Publicans were Cathars, see Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, ch. iii, p. 104)
It is no wonder, then, that Cosmas, when preaching on the Bogomil Cathars, says: “And they worship the devil to such an extent that they call him the creator of the divine words and ascribe the divine glory to him.” They also believed that “everything exists by the will of the devil”. (The sermon of Cosmas the Priest against Bogomilism, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority, ch. iii, p. 113)
One Cathar named Guillelme Carreria was plowing his fields and the plower’s yoke was displaced, and upon this he said: “Devil, put back that yoke in its proper place!” (The Inquisitorial Register of Jacques Fournier, Invocation of the devil: testimony of Arnaud Laufre, in Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, ch. ix, p. 264)
Concurring with many of today’s Evangelical Christians, and with the Latter Day Saints, they also believed that the Roman Catholic Church was the Harlot of Babylon of Revelation. They were so entrenched in this belief, that they affirmed that Christ assumed a bodily presence merely to incite us to fight against the Church of Rome, and to ask us to join the Cathar church.
In a debate between the Catholic Abbot of les Vaux-de-Cernay and a certain Cathar named Theodoric, the heretic was so trumped and unable to answer his opponent’s arguments, that he said: “The harlot [of Babylon] has kept me long enough, she shall keep me no longer.” (See Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, 1.10-12; 2.28, 52, brackets mine; Belloc, The Great Heresies, The Albigensian, pp. 72, 76-7; Englebert, St. Francis of Assisi, ch. v, p. 61)
Yet Protestants vehemently defend the Cathars as true Bible believing Christians.
As might as these declare the Native Americans as Bible believing Christians as well. Yet they don't. Why? It is because they killed them and not the Catholics.
While we agree with Americans when Andrew Jackson was implementing a form of inquisition when he signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, in which all Indians who did not fully assimilate to American society were to be removed west of the Mississippi.
The Creeks and the Chickasaws complied while eight million Cherokees were forced to journey two thousand miles from Georgia to what is today Oklahoma. Twenty percent of them died of starvation, or from rain, sleet, and snow. (See Winston Groom, Patriotic Fire, ch. iv, p. 55, note; ch. xviii, p. 255, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2006)
We should not be ashamed of such history. Americans were suffering from attacks by the Indians and the Mormons similar to those which the Moors afflicted upon the Spaniards and the Cathars afflicted in France during the Cathar wars. I will not ignore that in 1813, just sixteen years prior to the signing of the Act, the Creek Indians executed a gory raid on Fort Mims in Alabama where they butchered two hundred soldiers, massacred two hundred and fifty old men, women and children by fire and tomahawk, and murdered another one hundred friendly Indians. (See William Burdick, Political and Historical Register, vol. i, p. 191; A Copy of a letter from Captain Kennedy Brigadier-General Claiborne, dated Mount Vernon, September 26th, 1813, in T.H. Palmer, The Historical Register, vol. ii, p. 332)
I will not ignore the words of an eyewitness to this horror, which state that “blood and brains bespattered the whole earth. The children were seized by the legs, and killed by batting their heads against the stockading. The women were scalped and those who were pregnant were opened, while they were alive, and the embryo infants let out of the womb.” (In Winston Groom, Patriotic Fire, ch. iii, pp. 46-47)
Did America, after such an atrocity, strive for a policy of toleration? Did America throw the event under the rug to preserve relations with the Indians? No–America conducted a stern inquisition on the Creeks and commissioned the then Major General Andrew Jackson to crush the threat. When he arrived at a Creek Indian village suspected of having violent intentions toward America, he burnt it to the ground, and if anybody resisted, he ordered them to be seized and executed. (In Winston Groom, Patriotic Fire, ch. iii, pp. 47; ch. iv, p. 48)
President Andrew Jackson
But again, I will not condemn Jackson for taking this measure due to the violence and savage raids of the Indians, just as I will not chastise the Spaniards for their expulsion of the Moors for their continuous terror attacks. The infamous Davy Crocket fought under Jackson and when describing the killing of the Creeks, he writes that “we shot them like dogs”. When a Creek squaw, who was guarding a hut hiding many Indians including several dozen warriors, killed an American lieutenant, Jackson’s men shot her down and then burned the entire hut, killing one hundred and eighty Indians. (Winston Groom, Patriotic Fire, ch. iv, p. 49)
Sixteen years later, after the Creek War, Jackson passed and advocated the Indian Removal Act which, in a way, could be compared to the sentiments of the Spanish inquisitors. The Inquisition in Spain was done for the establishment of Christian supremacy, in that it wanted the people to integrate into Spanish culture and become Christian, and in comparison, Jackson himself said that one of the purposes of the Indian Removal Act was to have the Indians who refused to assimilate into American society to convert to Christianity. In his own words on the Act:
It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community. …He [the Indian] is unwilling to submit to the laws of the States and mingle with their population. To save him from this alternative, or perhaps utter annihilation, the General Government kindly offers him a new home, and proposes to pay the whole expense of his removal and settlement. (Transcript of President Andrew Jackson’s Message to Congress ‘On Indian Removal’ (1830), found in ourdocument.gov)
I have heard so many times how Ronald Reagan was America’s greatest president. While Reagan is superior to anything we have now, I would contend that Andrew Jackson was America’s greatest president. In 1978, when some righteous conservatives were trying to pass The Briggs Initiative, a measure that would have fired any teacher in California public schools who was homosexual or supported homosexuality, Reagan went against it, writing in one editorial
Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual’s sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child’s teachers do not really influence this (Reagan, (1978-11-01). “Editorial: Two Ill-advised California Trends”. Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. p. A19)
When the dangers of homosexuality were arising, Reagan did not combat it head on. Jackson, on the other hand, fought the evils of the pagan Native Indians, who slaughter Americans, head on. This is the righteous way of fighting evil: not to compromise with it, but to destroy it. This is true freedom: to have the liberty to resist and destroy all evil.
No one can deny that the expulsion of the Indians made a more peaceful society for the Americans, and that this security still exists today: no one worries anymore about Indians raiding one’s town. This freedom from the capricious hand armed with the tomahawk could only be attributed to the expulsion of the Indians–and as harsh as it sounds, this is only the honest truth that most are too afraid to confront: American civilization would have been impossible to build if Christian Europeans never settled on the land in the first place. Is it Christian supremacy over Indian religion and culture? Yes, it would be dishonest to deny this, but since when were we ever obligated to lament over this very fact? Those who point the finger and look down upon any part of Western history which illustrates Christian supremacy should realize that there is no nation on earth which does not have supremacy.
Anyone who next time tells you that the Catholic Church committed genocide have them refute our essay here.
Therefore, all these 'scripture aloneists' should start re-educating themselves beginning with doing the sign of the cross, repenting and taking communion.
Post a Comment