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Reality Check Time: The caption above is the lazy man's doctrine, where you never prove your dedication to Christ, and where you never increase your capacity for love. So, we need to begin with a general outline of the history of Protestantism, during its beginning decades.
Martin Luther was regarded as the pivotal founder of Protestantism. He was presented as a strong, healthy, clear-mind advocate of Freedom-of-thought, with no mental illness within him. He was the poster boy of bashing Catholics endlessly, being that he called the Roman Catholic Church the Whore of Babylon.
Well, medical academia has written on Luther's "well documented medical condition." It appeared to have been ignored by his modern-day propagandists. It would be beneficial for humanity to be forewarned of this, in light of the mass media propaganda that "flies through the air with the greatest of ease," these days.
The Anti-Catholic propaganda in of the 19th Century American "Know-Nothing" Political Party is being perpetuated today, at the speed of electrons. You need to know about their hero. He was the hero of the early Nazis, to the point of appearing in a 1933 Nazi Poster, as the great teacher of Germany ... literally. While Hitler's people were trying to be good Nazis, they regarded Luther as a damn good Nazi. However, there are Germans throughout the world who have been very bad Nazis, to the point of being anti-Nazi. The link below is that the abstract of "Martin Luther's Seizure Disorder." It was written in German and published in 1989.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2529669/
The following link is of the abstract of the peer-reviewed medical paper written about Luther in Japan and published in 2011. It concurs with the previous paper. And it can't be called a product of prejudice, being that it comes from other opposite side of the world, in a country not traditionally Roman Catholic.
Q: So, what could have caused such a pathology? ANS: Well, Martin Luther was from a mining town before the days of Ralph Nader and Environmental Activists. However, why was not everyone from that geographic area as unhealthy & impaired as Luther ... especially the miners? Therefore, there's another answer to the question.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22586892/
Then comes the abstract of Martin Luther's Attitude toward the Mentally Retarded, published in Volume 41, Issue 5, of Pediatrics Magazine, in 1968. It should have stated, Martin Luther's "deadly" attitude. We see why Luther was regarded as a damn good Nazi, to the point of being made a Nazi Party poster boy in 1933, directly before the rise of Adolph Hitler. After the death of Hindenberg (August 2nd, 1934), Hitler pressed the "top floor" button on his political elevator, and you know the rest.
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/41/5/944/44482/MARTIN-LUTHER-S-ATTITUDE-TOWARD-THE-MENTALLY?redirectedFrom=fulltext
It is written in Sacred Scripture that, in the end, nothing is kept hidden.
Enter Reality, Stage Center
At the outset, know this: [1] Martin Luther added the word, ALONE, to the phrase, "Faith suffices." The specific scriptural passage that Luther misrepresented was the one which stated that those who believe in Christ no longer have to follow the Law of Moses and all of its animal sacrifices. Jesus ended the law for animal sacrifices. And then Titus ended the ability for animal sacrifice, when he leveled Jerusalem to the ground.
There was 616 coded regulations in the Law of Moses. That codification was put to rest, by the coming of the Messiah. Luther completely distorted that scriptural passage, by adding one word which changed the entire meaning of it. That word did NOT appear in the Vulgate (which see.)
In addition, Luther wanted to ban the Epistle of James from of the Bible, as much as the Nazis wanted to ban Einstein's book on Special & General Relativity. That is the epistle which states, "So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead." James 2:17 And also . . .
"For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead." James 2:26.
In response to the claim that Catholics buried the Bible, never used it, and hid it from humanity:
[2a] Catholics officially use the Bible and teach the Bible far more often during any one day & any one year than do Protestants, ~as in the Divine Office (aka the Liturgy of the Hours) 8 times daily, ~at Sunday Mass 3 times each Mass, ~ at weekday Mass, 2 times per Mass, and in ~classroom instruction, being that there are far more Catholic schools in all levels of academia than there are Protestant ones, throughout the world.
[2b] The Catholic Church preserved the Bible, to the point of making handwritten copies of it throughout the centuries. Catholics were regularly doing this long before the word, Protestant, was ever spoken. You don't spend 2,000 years making copies of the Bible just so that you can suppress it and hide it from humanity. If the Catholic Church wanted to hide the Bible from the People, it would have simply stopped making copies of the Bible.
[2c] All in all, if it were not for the Catholic Church, there would be no New Testament, in the first place. After all, there was no such thing as Protestantism for the first 1,450 years of Christianity. Yet, the Bible was in full use throughout that entire time ... even with stained-glass window illustrations of Bible passages, on chapels, churches, and cathedrals.
[2d] Furthermore, Protestants are the ultimate Bible Frauds and Bible Hypocrites who refuse to follow the teachings of the Bible whenever the Bible infringes upon their lusts. The ultimate example is in the Biblical teaching on the Indissolubility of Marriage. Observe:
Christ expressly said, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
Mark 10:11 ... Matthew 19:9 ... Luke 16:18
Plus, the Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, at 7:10-11, states: To the married, however, I give this instruction (not I, but the Lord): A wife should not separate from her husband. 11 — and
if she does separate, she must either remain single or become reconciled
to her husband — and a husband should not divorce his wife.
There is also the Book of the Prophet Malachi, Chapter 2, verses 15 to 16::: "... and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. 16 For I hate divorce, says the LORD, the God of Israel"
Despite the undeniable proof that the Indissolubility of Marriage is completely Biblical, the Protestants have "divorce & remarriage," to their eternal detriment. There are other examples that were cited in other discourses, at the Heart of the Virgin Mary, concerning Protestant Biblical Hypocrisy. The lesson here is that, despite their centuries of sanctimonious Sola Scriptura Bible-only centrality ======>
Protestants aren't the Sola Scriptura - Bible-only - people they make themselves out to be. Protestants are "the Bible-only-when-it's-convenient" people.
[3] In the 1520s & 1530s, Lutheranism was only established by law ... by edict ... by decree, and not by popular demand. After all, it was too new of a religion to win a popularity contest. Wherever Lutheranism was established by law, Catholicism was made illegal. Thus, there was no freedom of thought with Lutheranism, at all. Calvinism was the same.
[4] Moreover, a notable number of Catholic priests and non-ordained "religious" were martyred by Calvinists, even to the tune of 40 Jesuit seminarians and priests in Brazil, in one fell swoop ... and also by Dutch Calvinist pirates in Europe. [5] In addition, at the end of the 19th Century, the cause for canonization was underway for 359 Roman Catholic martyrs under the reign of Henry VIII. There's more. There's much more, such as this reality: The super epic Church Reformer was . . . Saint Francis of Assisi. And he was a very gentle person who accomplished all he did before bone cancer took him away, at the age of 43 ... or 44.
In as much, if you don't have a fear of the truth, and if you don't have a resentment for the Truth, then let's go to it. Q: Go to what, actually? ANS: The summit of truth.
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Creation at a distance, far far away. Wisdom comes when you step back and take a look at your situation.
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There's a general rule of historical studies & life itself: Always look for the motive
Do not be deceived. At its 16th Century inception, Protestantism was a political power play, in the attempt to grab as many jurisdictions as possible from the jigsaw puzzle known as the Holy Roman Empire. In defining the political structure of that empire, you can interchangeably call it a "political quilt." This is because it was a patchwork of duchies, hochstifts (each managed by a bishop), countships, principalities, and imperial free cities. Note: A hochstift is a bishopric with added acreage.
This Protestant acquisition of the various jurisdictions would translate into the acquisition of Catholic Church real estate and financial assets. The names on the effected real estate deeds would all be changed, of course. None the less, Protestantism was originally a north-central European phenomenon, and the Holy Roman Empire became mostly a north-central political confederation, by 1378. That was 143 years before Martin Luther made his mark. The Year 1378 is mentioned, because it's recognized as the start of the Great Western Schism, when anti-popes arrayed the European political landscape.
None the less, the late 1300s and early 1400s are regarded as the precursor years of the Protestant Movement, particularly in the persons of John Wycliffe and Jan Hus (It's pronounced a lot like "Yawn Hoose"). Concerning these two individuals, propagandists made a sport out of false light presentations of them, to the point of making both individuals martyrs of the evil evil, Bible-hating, Whore of Babylon Church. Therefore, a brief background is needed:
Before anything else, take note that, within the documents of Vatican II, the travesty known as 16th Century Europe was a time when "both sides were at fault." This included the Catholics there, at the time, too. Next:
[1a] John Wycliffe suffered his second stroke on December 28, 1384, during Mass. Three days later, he died. This occurred in Lutterworth England. No one executed him. There's more on Wycliffe to mention, but print space needs to be budgeted here.
[1b] It suffices to state that, 44 years after 1384, Wyclyffe's bodily remains were exhumed and removed from consecrated land ... tossed out. His followers were Lollards, (which see.) His most famous financial supporter was John of Gaunt (Ghent), Duke of Lancaster (which see.) .
[2] Jan Hus was in the middle of a power-play. He lived in Bohemia (Czech Republic) during an ongoing tug-of-war between two simultaneous anti-popes, a prior anti-pope, and a papal claimant eventually recognized as the valid pope. However, it looked like Hus was trying to become a type of pope unto himself.
Hus was cited as having taught 30 heretical "propositions." He obstinately refused to retract any of them. Those doctrinal assertions were silly, to be honest with you. Well actually, they were goofy. For example, Hus claimed that, as soon as a priest commits a mortal sin, he is no longer a priest.
****** Roman Catholic Doctrine about the priesthood generally goes as follows ******
The truth is that it's only Christ's power that makes a priest a priest; not any
amount of holiness, on the part of the priest. Therefore, even if a priest loses holiness, he doesn't lose his
priesthood. The only way in which a priest can lose his priesthood is if Jesus Christ
suddenly stops existing. Authentic Church Teaching is that a validly ordained priest is a priest forever, even if he goes to Hell. And yes, priests are NOT immune to Eternal Damnation, simply because they're priests.
*************************************************************************
Moreover, Wycliffe's statements were on the side of defamatory. In addition, there is a huge difference between a translating the Bible into English, and a deliberately mistranslating it However, it could be assumed that Wycliff was referring to priests of his era, as opposed to the nature of the priesthood, when writing the damning things he wrote. None the less, Wycliffe died from a stroke, as opposed to dying from rope-induced strangulation or an enthusiastically lit bonfire. None the less . . .
. . . at a modern Catholic college, if you make such assertions as did Hus, the honor students will silently roll their eyes and a professor will flunk you, followed by you changing your major to Journalism, Sociology, or Political Science. No big deal. Hus, however, was riling up the lesser-educated people with a sky-is-falling hype. Yes, there was the matter of speaking out against clergy corruption, but a person can't exaggerate.
Furthermore, Hus was an ordained priest (as of 1401) and he did teach at one of the Prague universities. So, he was seen as a "steward" of Church teaching and even property. All that he had to do was not be so stubborn over those 30 doctrinal
assertions which were contrary to the textbooks he agreed to follow, in
order to become a professor. He was in breech of contract, for starters. He needed to go out and start his own religion, without using church property, in the process thereof.
Moreover, a Renaissance era priest was not declared a "heretic" unless he refused to be corrected in erroneous doctrinal statements. Being obstinate, while being in doctrinal error, is Renaissance Era heresy. Today, you have to go out and start your own religion, with your own congregation, to be declared a heretic or a schismatic.
Well, in the middle of the Council of Constance (Konstanz), in 1415, Hus was declared a heretic. Okay. Fine. He was then handed over to civil authority who ended up executing him in an anarchic fashion. Yet, they did it in way that enabled Hus to retract his heresies, all the way to the "place of immolation" where they set the hay on fire. Okay. NOT fine. Now, here is the outrage of it all:
Jan Hus's Execution was the act of civil authorities going out of bounds.
Show me the name of the civil authority who had jurisdiction over Hus. Show me that authority's sentencing document. In fact, where was the trial? Where was the due process of the law by civil authority? The church clergy took its time with Hus, and then all of sudden, whoooosh. It was instant doom, when it came the civil leaders. That wasn't very civilized of them. Was it, now?
Plus, a rule needed to observe, in order to keep the peace ... and prevent rioting ... is to NEVER make your enemy look like a martyr. I mentioned this in my Military Science Reference Guide, concerning the treatment of POW's. I assume that it can still be found online. Next:
In fairness to the ruling class at the time, there was a motivation for a speedy execution. ANS: The 1414 Oldcastle's Revolt ... in England. It started with followers of the late John Wycliffe being sent to the Tower of London. It ended in a battle on Sr. Giles Field. John Oldcastle fled early in the battle. In the end, 80 of John Wycliffe's followers (Lollards) were captured. Seventy-nine of them were put to death ... by burning or hanging.
Shortly after the Hus lynching of 1415 came another lynching in 1431: that of Joan of
Arc, during the Hundred Years War which actually lasted for 116 years. She was a prisoner of war, and the treatment of her would not have passed the Geneva Convention's code of conduct.
The war was a long one, but her execution was a quick process. It was a kangaroo court. It was a War Crime, quite frankly. That lynching occurred outside of the Holy Roman Empire's border,
though. There was a reason for the burning at the stake form of execution, by the way. I'm not going to get into it right now. It will require too much print space.
The bottom line is that Hus was executed in the midst of anarchy, toward the end of the Great Western Schism. He contributed to the anarchy. Quite frankly, certain individuals were posturing themselves for the next election for the office of Holy Roman Emperor. So, putting a heretic quickly to death was seen as credit points, in their political campaign.
The irony is that there was not going be another imperial election for another 23 years ... March of 1438. It was a matter of all that fanfare for nothing. For the record, the Holy Roman Emperor was elected by an electoral college, just like the President of the United States.
Old Testament Executions and 16th Century rationalization for execution
Q: From where came the 15th, 16th, & 17th Century idea of executing people for false doctrine? ANS: The Old Testament. Let's go a step further:
In 11th Century Roman Catholic England ... and Danish Viking England ... William the Conqueror abolished the Death Penalty completely . . . except in times of war. Henry VIII repealed that law. As time advanced, England would have the death penalty for 220 crimes, including "keeping the company of gypsies for at least one month." Under Hammurabi, 25 crimes got the death penalty. In Dracon's Athens (621 to 594 BC) the death penalty was given out as commonly as modern-day traffic tickets.
There was a time when decimating a tobacco crop in Protestant America
(in Colonial America) got the death penalty. And why? ANS: Because
tobacco was monetary currency, at one time. In colonial America, horse-theft got the death penalty, along with numerous other acts. Then came branding. If you were convicted of burglary, you would get the letter, B, burned into your right hand ... and into your left hand, for the second offense.
The death penalty was not isolated to the evil evil Whore of Babylon Catholic Church. It is a part of the human condition, dating back to the beginning of civilization, as was war. And it was very easy for the archeologists to discern the pattern of warfare. It dealt with the fact that men went to war and women stayed in the villages ... camps ... fortresses.
A small population of male bodily remains in the archeological sites indicated warfare, and it was found that warfare was as early as civilization. There was no Utopia in the beginning of civilization. Actually, the history of human civilization was quite uncivilized. It definitely enforces a believer's belief in Original Sin, meaning that man is not an evolved monkey. Man is a fallen angel. Monkeys can't read Shakespeare.
No one in civil authority decided to exile Hus ... or to send him to counseling. In fact, the common church practice through the centuries was that of telling the impenitent sinner that he needed to spend his remaining days in a monastery, doing penance ... unless he were far to stubborn to comply in any capacity.
None the less, the execution of Hus resulted in outraged citizens. This resulted in a fifteen-year long series of wars that didn't even begin until four years after Hus was executed. And it didn't begin until a handful of Hussites tossed a judge out of a second story window.
For some reason, tossing people out of a window was a custom in Europe, during the Little Ice Age. If you wanted to start a war in Europe, you would first throw a guy out of a window. It's kind of like the glove-slap-in-the-face thing you see in the movies, when one 18th Century guy is challenging another one to a duel.
Here was the fear: It's simple. The fear was that Hus would start at least a local revolt and take some Church property with him. The very thing they tried to prevent ended up happening. None the less, this "rash misuse" of civil power resulted in a series of ecumenical councils dedicated to cleaning up the clergy, being that the clergy was very negligent in what happened to a priest "handed-over to civil authority."
An institution as large as the Catholic Church will attract power-grabbers and the greedy. All power-grabbers are power-abusers. A weeding-out process is needed in large institutions. These abuses of power throughout history were not the result of the Catholic Church being the evil evil "Whore of Babylon." They came about because the Catholic Church was so large ... so powerful ... and so rich. Thieves sneak-up behind the rich ... not the poor. Thieves break-in to the rich house ... not the poor one.
It is much easier to hide in a large city than in a small village. It is also easier to sneak around a large church than a small one. And there is much more to steal from a large city ... a large church ... a large anything. So, the Catholic Church needs to be on guard for the infiltration of the wolves. It's that simple. The Corruption Factor of any institution is equal to its Size Factor. Period.
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You sometimes have to clean a temple of its money-changers.
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In 1648, after an exceptionally traumatizing war, the Holy Roman Empire was entirely within the parameters of north-central Europe. None the less, within a few years after Lutheranism became established, the Lutheran doctrine expanded slightly beyond the Holy Roman Empire, by writ of law, and not by popular demand. So, the Protestant Movement remained a northern one, expanding into Scandinavia and Iceland.
Ironically enough, one of Protestantism's most successful players vehemently condemned in written text the doctrines of Luther and the Anabaptists whom even Luther condemned. That person was King Henry VIII of the very northern nation of England. And technically speaking, he was a schismatic and not a heretic. But, he was ruthlessly bloody, none the less.
In the case of Henry VIII, he successfully imposed his will upon the higher-ups of England, and then he installed his new religion in the remaining buildings and infrastructure of the old religion. (Henry liquidated Catholic land.) He even used the bishops of the old religion to proceed with his new religion. However, in order for this to have worked so well, cowardice amongst the second and third levels of power had to prevail. This happened in 1534, with the Supremacy Act.
And of course, John Fisher was the only bishop in England who didn't comply with Henry Tudor. The other ones apparently didn't want to sacrifice the easy life appropriated by Renaissance technology. John Fisher became a revered martyr. He wasn't the only one. Margaret Clitherow, Edmund Campion, and Thomas More were also martyred under the Tudor dynasty. Margaret was given a brutal execution.
Yes, Henry can be regarded more as a brutal schismatic than a brutal heretic, at the start of his acquisition of Catholic Church infrastructure. A schismatic is one who keeps the doctrine, but denies the authority who upholds that doctrine. A heretic actually edits and redacts existing doctrine. He "picks and chooses" what he wants, and then tosses out the rest. It's called "Cafeteria Catholicism," as in choosing certain foods in the cafeteria line, while passing-up the rest.
Henry simply declared himself the managing administrator of the Christian Faith in England; not the author of a new doctrine. Luther, on the other hand, redacted doctrine and even removed books from the Bible that were officially declared the inspired Word of God throughout the preceding 1,139 years. None the less, both Luther & Tudor caused untold bloodshed. Both of those two movers & shakers of Protestantism gained significant amounts of body weight in their latter years, as well. Life was not burdensome for them.
Henry simply wanted a divorce that could not morally be given to him, by any pope who wanted to be free of the hypocrisy of betraying a mission that dated back to Peter, Paul, and a number of people who accepted death, in order to prolong that mission. So, Henry made himself the pope of England, by starting the Church of England with Roman Catholic church property. Many deaths of people faithful to the former religion transpired. And of course, there is a huge difference between the church IN England and the Church OF England.
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Bell Tower of London, where Thomas More & John Fisher were held, before their executions
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The start of Protestantism (as a politically-supported structure) was 1521. This was when the Elector of Saxony elected to give lodging and an academic dean post to the historical figure, Martin Luther of Eisleben. The protection and deanship was in Wittenberg, 53 miles away from Luther's copper-mining hometown.
Q: What is the first red flag, here? ANS: A layman is assigning a theology post to the person of his choice. Shouldn't a bishop, an abbot, a monsignor, or an ordained priest with university powers do the assigning? The answer is, yes. In as much, this was the first shot fired in the Protestant-Catholic Wars. Moreover, you insult an educated person's intelligence by calling it a "reformation." There was no reformation there. There was merely the theft of Catholic Church property and the theft of Catholic administrators' rights. Period.
Martin Luther was the original Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
Now, concerning Luther contradicting himself, propagandists of today let it be known the he wrote, Admonition to Peace Concerning the Twelve Articles of the Peasants. Well, Luther also wrote, Against the Murderous and Robbing Hordes of the Peasants. An insanely high number of peasants died between 1524-1525. During such a rebellion, written texts can be more incendiary than shiploads of gunpowder. Plus, Luther was cited by witnesses as having an explosive temper.
Now, Luther is introduced in modern texts as a monk who nailed a page or two or three to a church door and then suffered repression. Firstly, the hammer & nail story was as fictional as the George Washington Cherry Tree Story. Secondly, he was an Augustinian friar, and there happens to be a huge difference between a friar and a monk. Friars have more access to the public mind and the court of public opinion. Friars can be more influential, depending on who operates the nearest printing presses.
The 95 Theses text was mailed to the bishop's administrators. If you nail something to a 16th Century church door, it will get torn down and tossed out by the maintenance crew, because such a thing was NOT an element of protocol. Only church bulletins were placed on church doors. Thus, a courier delivered 95 Theses.
Proof that the hammer and nail tale was bull crap exists in the fact that TWO envelopes accompany the 95 thesis statements. A cover letter is included also, meaning that one envelope was for the 95 one-liners and one envelope was for the cover letter to the bishop.
The lesson here is that you get exaggerated sensationalism in tales about Luther, followed by him being portrayed as the ultimate caring being. Yet, 100,000 peasants ever so coincidentally died after his condemnation of them was published. Entire nations were told that their official religion was now going to be this new one invented by Martin Luther. Yet, it was a religion that was never taken out for a test drive.
The con artistry of one person does NOT summarize the entire organization for all time.
Moreover, the Indulgence thing was a super exaggeration. Firstly, an indulgence is NOT the absolution from your sins. They are NOT permission slips that allow you to go out and sin. The only way to be free of your sins is by the absolution of any validly ordained priest. If no priest is available, then either [1] a perfect act of contrition or [2] a perfect act of love renders a human in the state of grace ... provided that the person would have willingly gone to confession, if a priest were available. There is also the matter of "baptism by blood," and "baptism of desire" (which see).
Now, an indulgence is the partial or complete remission of the TEMPORAL PUNISHMENT due to sin, AFTER THE SIN HAS BEEN FORGIVEN. An indulgence comes from "the merits of Christ," and an indulgence does NOT grant you absolution from your sins. They are assigned by the presiding pope, by the Power of the Keys that Christ gave to Peter individually. And the Power of the Papal Keys is 100% Biblical, appearing in the New Testament. Peter being assigned the first pope by Christ is equally Biblical. Only a liar denies something so obviously stated in writing. (See: Enchiridion of Indulgences.)
Today, you can get an indulgence by doing the Stations of the Cross, even in silence. You can get an indulgence by reciting the Rosary with other people. You can even get an indulgence for reading the Bible. And of course, the Bible indulgence flies in the face of the Protestants who very falsely claim that Catholic never use the Bible.
None the less, pious acts would be assigned "the remission of the temporal punishment due to sin already forgiven." And of course, donating money to a charity is a pious act. However, today that type of pious act does not get any indulgence, due to early 16th Century fund-raising con artistry.
The anti-Catholic propagandist makes the indulgence thing sound link this reenactment: Wife: "Oh honey, I'm going down to the store. Can I get you anything?" Husband: "Can you pick me up a couple indulgences, dear? They're sitting next to the produce section." Wife: "Sure thing, babe." . . . It doesn't work that way. The anti-Catholic propagandists ... liars that they are ... made it sound as if Catholics were buying the permission to sin. Oh no. In 16th Century Europe, if you did the wrong thing, you got punished. Catholics are also instructed to "avoid the near occasion of sin," and NOT to go out and buy indulgences.
Therefore, it is 100,000% BULL CRAP to claim that Catholics in the 16th Century were buying indulgences, to get absolution from their sins ... or to get permission to go out and commit any sin they wanted. The great irony is that Luther said that it was okay to commit any sin you wanted. This shows that Luther was nothing but a hypocrite.
Sinful people wouldn't waste their money on buying permission to sin ... or buying something as invisible as "absolution from sin." They didn't care then. They don't care now. They instead spent their money on pleasure and power. They spent their money on alcohol and women, as well as business investments. And in the 16th Century, there was a new industry starting-up which would result in the Calvinist Dutch being the very rich investors of that trade. It was called the Slave Trade. Yes, Dutch Protestants would become masters of that trade ... pun sarcastically intended.
Once again, a true Catholic only sought "remission of the temporal punishment due to sins that have already been forgiven through the sacramental absolution of a priest." This meant that she/he still had to avoid sin and resist temptation. Luther was only looking for an excuse to push through his new doctrine. He used the indulgence thing as a diversionary tactic, evidenced by him changing the subject repeatedly, as soon as he got lodging from the Elector of Saxony. Luther was a very predictable GAS-LIGHTER, no different than the politicians of today.
Francis of Assisi was the great saint ... as well as all the martyrs in Henry Tudor's England ... not Luther. Do not be deceived. Luther had it easy. Francis of Assisi was the one who did his share of aesthetic works, including a 40 day fast. Saint Patrick did this, also.
So, another lesson here is that even the indulgence thing was presented in a sophomorically false light, as much as is the Catholics-don't-read-the-Bible thing. (See: Council of Rome, 382 CE ... also the Council of Carthage ... and even a number of Councils of Toledo.)
Luther's doctrine said to be was reminiscent of that of Jan Hus. There was a huge difference between the two. None the less, the Hussite religion was NOT a national religion anywhere, including in Bohemia. It still did not reach the popularity of a national religion. None the less, declaring a cult's religion a national religion was very unnatural. Yet, this happened with Luther's semi-neo-Hussite religion. War after war ensued after Luther's movement began moving through northern royal courts. That religion became Dictator's Choice ... like a coffee brand. It prevented freedom of thought. Luther was a CONTROL FREAK, trying to impose his new doctrine on everyone else.
Luther also advocated the eviction of the Jews from all of Germany, during a time before Germany was even called Germany. This is why he literally became a Nazi German poster boy in 1933. Luther was used by the Nazis, to prove to the German people that everything Hitler said about the Jews was true --- that Martin Luther gave his endorsement of Hitler's answer to the "Jewish Question."
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Here is where the Seed of the Antichrist was planted, as in the Undoing of Christ.
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If it were not for Martin Luther's anti-Jewish rhetoric in the 16th Century, the Nazis would never have gotten away with killing anywhere near the 6 million Jews they killed in the 20th Century. The German people chipped in, and helped their Fuhrer exterminate millions of Jews. Adolph could not have done it alone. All credit goes to the German People who did Hitler's dirty work for him. And Luther was literally an inspiration. The lesson here is to be careful about the writings you leave behind for future generations to read. The other lesson here is that evil is attracted to evil, as in Hitler and Luther.
Concerning the 95 Theses text, only 41 of those one-line statements were declared heretical. The other 54 statements were declared fine --- "not contrary to the Catholic Faith." Even at that, Luther was given 60 days to file a recant of those 41 heretical statements. Then, he was given an extra 60 days to get a copy delivered to the Vatican. Thus, Luther started out as only half a heretic --- actually 43% heretic . He eventually got himself into quicksand, as in when he agreed to debate Erasmus. (which see.) Luther then started the fad of book-burning, by burning Catholic Church notices that were sent to him.
His heresies started in 1517. He wasn't excommunicated, until 1521. Thus, he was given the needed time and process of the law. Therefore, it is a great falsehood to claim that the Elector of Saxony gave Luther sanctuary, in order to finally give Luther a fair chance. Luther was given YEARS of fair chances ... and papal patience.
Even after Luther was excommunicated, Charles V allowed Luther to testify on his own behalf, directly to the assembly of leaders of the Holy Roman Empire. Luther was given chance after chance after chance after chance. Thus, it's a damnable lie to say that Luther was deprived of his rights ... and that the Elector of Saxony only gave Luther sanctuary, out of the kindness of his heart.
Do not be deceived. Harboring Luther was a Las Vegas gamble, in betting that a young & relatively newly elected Hapsburg would be too thinned-out in imperial duties to order drastic measures against Luther and Saxony. After all . . .
... Charles V was already the King of Spain and also of Austria, meaning that he had to deal with the vast American holdings to the West and the threat of the Ottoman Turks to the East. There was warfare in Italy ... against the French ... for Charles to monitor, while he was in Spain, dealing with the Comuneros Rebellion.. He was also in charge of the Netherlands, and he was King of Naples. Let us not forget about the warfare in Protestant Switzerland.
Plus, nearby Denmark had a bloodletting king ... Christian II ... who was shedding blood in Sweden. Thus, Luther appeared to have a strong ally nearby. Ironically, it wouldn't be until his son, Christian III, took the throne of Denmark that Norway would be ordered to become Lutheran. None the less, the gamble of 1521 worked very successfully.
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Martin Luther's protector & new employer, Frederich III, Elector of Saxony.
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The word, Protestant, came into existence after the April 1529 Protestation at Speyer. The Protestation was a response to the imperial assembly's repeal of a 1526 law which directed every jurisdiction in the empire to designate its own official religion. Then, in 1529, it was decided that the empire would solely adhere to the one religion professed by its long line of emperors.
More importantly, religion was regarded throughout human history as if it were a national language. Now, the language spoken by the most people in any one nation officially becomes its national language. Well, the spiritual language spoken the most throughout the existence of the Holy Roman Empire was Catholicism. Therefore, designating a newly formed religion as a nation's official religion ... or a jurisdiction's official religion ... was entirely artificial, unnatural, and done without the consent of the citizenry. Religion comes through the practice of custom & tradition. A national religion takes time to actualize itself. And of course, a government is supposed to reflect the will of its People.
Christianity did NOT appear overnight in the Ancient Roman Empire
Lutheranism, Anabaptism, and Calvinism were neither a part of the People's customs nor traditions. They were too new to be any nation's most popular religion. In fact, Christianity was practiced throughout the ancient Roman Empire well over 250 years before the Edict of Milan simply granted freedom of religion per se, along with restitution to the persecuted Christians whose assets were previously seized.
Contrary to the propaganda, Christianity was NOT suddenly made the official religion of the Ancient Roman Empire. Thus, in 1521, it would have been an act of usurpation and/or tyranny to have imposed any newly formed Protestant sect upon anyone in the Holy Roman Empire who practiced Catholicism as a part of a three hundred, six hundred, or even nine hundred year tradition. So, the axiom at hand is . . .
[1] the People vote by means of the customs & traditions they follow.
[2] the People vote with their coin purses ... wallets ... checkbooks ... debit cards.
[3] the People vote on their state religion, by their church attendance. Very simple.
There is one great irony here. In Catholic doctrine, becoming Catholic required FULL CONSENT. The same is the teaching on marriage. Thus, "no shotgun wedding is valid" was a motto in Catholic Church teaching.
All in all, you cannot morally force a person into a religion. This includes Lutheranism in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. Thus, no king can force religion on you. A king can simply enforce a moral code of conduct, derived from "natural law" and instinctive common sense. He can order you to not throw elderly women on to subway tracks, but he can't order you to believe who created Planet Earth.
Now, this should instantly bring to your mind a question about Spain and the Jews. Concerning the Jews of Spain, the bankers amongst them were funding the occupier Moors, for hundreds of years. (See: Jizya.)
The invaders of the past 7 centuries were now conquered, and Queen Isabella was not going let Spain endure another "pernicious conquest" of Spain, again. Being that it took a long time to get the occupiers out of their country, Isabella was going to make sure that they would not return as anything other than tourists. So, the Muslims' favorite bankers were ousted. They happened to be Jewish.
However, there was a loophole that Isabella had to honor. Some of those Jews converted throughout the centuries. After all, Jews did marry Spaniards. Jews married Italians. My Italian-Spanish-Jewish baselines of DNA, along with my J2 haplogroup YDNA indicates this to have been the case. (It's the same YDNA as possessed by the Rothchilds, Adam Sandler, Bernie Sanders, etc --- very common amongst Jews So, Isabella couldn't rightfully toss out the Catholic Jews.)
This then created a second loophole. Run out and get baptized, and you get to stay in Spain. HOWEVER, Catholic baptism is not instantaneous. There is the Rite of Christian Initiation, as in [1] tutorial classes on doctrine & the sacraments. Also included is [2] "a baptismal sponsor," where any adult Catholic will do. And then there is the matter of [3] being introduced to a parish ... or at a cathedral ... on a Palm Sunday mass. {5} Then comes the baptism, for those not yet baptized. So, going through the Rite of Christian Initiation was a great way to delay your deportation. In conclusion, the ousting of Jews from Spain was seen as the military tactic of "cutting off" the enemies' supply lines ... financial supply lines. The Jews funded Muslim invader in 7th Century Jerusalem, also.
Now comes the two contradictions: [1] Muslim Moors were allowed to stay in Spain, as Mudéjares. They did NOT have to convert. If they became Moorish converts to Catholicism, they were Moriscos. However, at the end of the 16th Century, the Moriscos were accused by the chief royal financial officer of conspiring with Barbary pirates, for profit. Finally, in 1609, the Moriscos were ordered out of Spain, despite the fact that they were Roman Catholic. The majority of them took refuge in northwestern Africa. At the time, that area was known as Maghreb. The job was completed under Philip III, in 1614.
[2] There were native Spaniards who gave-in to the Moors, too. Why weren't they ousted?
The lesson here is that evil sometimes changes sides. The eviction of Roman Catholic Moors was one of the more asinine debacles in public relations history, with the ill effects remaining for centuries to follow. And concerning the Jews, all that was needed to be done was a seasonal audit of their financial assets.
Even in Nazi Germany, when it came to German citizens having complaints against certain Jewish financial practices, all that had to be done was for them to file a complaint in civil court. The Germans needed to take Jews to civil court ... to Judge Wapner's People's Court ... to Judge Judy's court ... not to concentration camps. Hitler overacted one too many times in his life. He also broke every treaty he ever signed. Oh, and he also called the nuclear bomb the wunderwaffe - - - the wonder weapon. He was clueless about nuclear fallout.
Italy had its griefs during the 16th Century, too
In the 1520s, there was in progress one of the seven "Italian Wars." (Only six of them were called "Italian Wars.) It involved a sequence of three legitimate popes in a tightly knitted time span. The middle one was the Dutchman, Adrian VI, personal friend of Belgian-born Charles V. His reign was less than two years in length.
None the less, he and his predecessor were friendly to the Hapsburg family member who held the position of Holy Roman Emperor in the early 1520s --- except during the Year 1524. But, Adrian's immediate successor created an alliance that opposed the Hapsburg family member, Charles V. It was called the Cognac League, and its creation resulted in a war that saw the Holy Roman Empire opposed by France, the Papal States, and eight other armies.
That war began in 1526 and then continued until the Muslim Turks made their first attempt to conquer Vienna, in 1529. Then, in 1530, the Papal States became an ally of Charles, being that Charles proved himself to be a defender of the Faith, in saving Vienna from the invading Ottoman Turks. Only then was Charles V crowned emperor by a Clement VII whose papacy would come to be overloaded with political power plays and the accompanying wars. And then, after his tragic papacy, things would only get worse in Europe. For the record, Vienna was only the capital of Austria; not of the Holy Roman Empire.
And yes, 34,000 imperial troops ignored Charles V's order to confront the Turks, and instead brutally sacked Rome, in the Spring of 1527. This is what happens when you defeat your enemy (the French) and do NOT quickly pay your victorious soldiers any wage.
None the less, in the 1520s Charles had to deal with [1] the attacks of the Ottoman Muslims ... [2] the violence surrounding the newly formed Lutherans of Germany who were no friends of the newly formed Anabaptists ... [3] the armed Calvinists in Switzerland who were no friends of the exact same Anabaptists ... [4] warfare against France, even on Italian terrain ... [5] the distrust of (and military hostilities from) a legitimate pope and his legitimate papal states ...
. . . and then, in the 1540s, there would be Calvinists in Meaux France, while Charles was trying to have the Treaty of Crepy bring peace ... at least with his great rival, France's Francis I. Charles endured into the mid-1550s. He then abdicated. He was simply wracked and drained of strength. Thirty-seven years as emperor was long enough. All in all, whether you are a winner or a loser, war will cost you, in the end. Attempts at Peace will simply drain you.
French Protestantism: a religion imported across the Eastern border
Even the French versions of Protestantism originated in northeastern France and in Calvinist Switzerland. Then, during the reign of Louis XIV, the Calvinist Huguenots had to abandon their strongholds in Southern France, being that they were accused of soliciting political allies unfriendly toward the French monarchy. Thus came the Edict of Fontainebleu, in 1685. Louis XIV literally feared a coup d'etat from Protestants. After all, Protestants made a long-term fad out of stealing acres of Catholic Church property throughout Europe. However, in the case of France, outraged secular laymen would take hold of church property in the 1790s.
Ironically, Louis XVI would enact the Edict of Versailles, in 1787, extending a portion of tolerance to any and every Protestant sect. It was all for nothing. Two years later, he would be removed from power. On March 21, 1804, Napoleon would grant complete religious liberty throughout his French empire.
Napoleon was an Italian aristocrat from Corsica, and he did go to Sunday Mass, where he would respectfully hold his famous hat under his left arm. In fact, a valet of his spoke of a time when atheists were mentioning how they only believed in matter and not in spirit. Napoleon then pointed toward the starlit night and said, "You may talk as long as please, gentlemen. But who made all of that?"
Despite this, Napoleon's great problem was that he needed moral theology lessons in [1] not pillaging a conquered nation, and [2] in discerning a just war. Concerning this, Napoleon was in shock to find out how poor 19th Century Spain was. There was not much pillaging and plundering to do there. Napoleon concluded that he wasted his time invading Spain.
Napoleon did not believe in the separation of Church & State; only in limits of power between the two entities. None the less, from 1685 until the end of the Holy Roman Empire, Protestantism resumed being the Northern European phenomenon that it was at the end of the 30 Years War. In the end, Napoleon Bonaparte would accomplish in the early 19th Century that which the Protestants were trying to do, for 283 years --- dissolve the Holy Roman Empire.
Now that's what I call a dictator! Ordering the memory of St Thomas a Becket to be erased from every British mind
Who needs Orwell's 1984, when you have Henry VIII's 1534? As far as went the Northwestern Isles of Europe during the Protestant Movement, Henry VIII would successfully steal Catholic Church real estate, in "dissolving" approximately or exactly 189 monasteries ... and in taking every other acre of Catholic Church property in England.
Henry would then proceed with a fund-raising campaign which consisted in him selling church property to the British gentry. In fact, he was dependent upon the British parliament throughout his reign. After all, he was not a creative fund-raiser and he was not versed in any form of economics beyond standard "mercantilism." So, he had need of the Parliament's treasury.
His Protestant daughter, Elizabeth, would depend upon ship crews called "privateers," for economic relief. A privateer is a pirate. Yes, the British Crown gladly accepted stolen property from Spanish, French, and Portuguese ships. After all, Protestantism did not have a concept of "making restitution for theft." Nor did it have a concept of "restitution for damages caused by defamation." The defamation against Catholic entities went beyond the level of ridiculous. That topic is for another discourse ... due to time and print space. None the less . . .
Ireland was a cash crop for England, in its emerald isle forests. It is written, "The British Navy was built on Irish oak." In as much, if you believed that Protestantism was a movement to make people moral, while the Catholics were being all so evil, then you are sadly mistaken. The Irish were minding their own business. The Catholics were the victims, for the most part. But not always.
When you have an institution as large as the Catholic Church, you will magnetically attract power-grabbers & money-grabbers. Such persons have no conscience. In as much, the Number One person who wants to takeover the Catholic Church, and use it for his own purposes, is Satan.
Iceland, Scandinavia, and Lapland
Iceland would be forced to embrace Lutheranism at the hands of Denmark's King Christian III. Then, in 1537, Norway would also be forced to officially become Lutheran, at the point of the military swords of the exact same Christian III.
Sweden's Gustav I attempted to establish Lutheranism as the official Swedish religion in 1527, even to the point of "nationalizing" all Catholic Church property in Sweden, and putting its maintenance into the hands of Lutheran leaders. But, he had insufficient success at his goal.
His son, John III, became brother-in-law of the Roman Catholic king of Poland. This meant that John's son, Sigismund, was raised a Roman Catholic. So, John was a sympathizer who did whatever he could for his wife's and his son's religion. As a result, he tried to fuse the two religions together and make a new religion; Lutheranism & Catholicism, that is.
Next came John III's Roman Catholic son ascending to the throne of Sweden. He was also the head of state of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, dating back to 1587. He was zealous for Catholicism. Actually, he was zealous for tradition, being that it was traditional to be a Roman Catholic Swede for a few centuries. He ascended to his Swedish father's throne, in 1592, as Sigismund III Vasa. He was also titled, Grand Duke of Finland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.
Do not be deceived. Lutheranism was spread by the sword and the shedding of blood.
Sigismund created the Polish-Swedish Union. So, he would spend time in Poland that needed to be spent in Sweden. Next in the timeline came a 1593 declaration by certain clergymen by which Sweden was declared to be a Lutheran nation. (See: Uppsala Meeting.) Sigismund's uncle was in attendance, and he would become Sigismund greatest opponent, even taking the Swedish thrown from Sigismund, in 1599. The People of Sweden did NOT have a vote on the issue.
When Sigismund was deposed, he was given six months to send his son, Ladislaus IV, to Sweden, provided that the boy would be raised Protestant there. Well, Ladislaus' policy was Religious Tolerance. While king of Sweden, he spent his time as founder of the Polish Commonwealth Navy, patron of the arts, and Czar of Russia. He was elected by the 7 Boyars, after his army captured Moscow. His immediate successors would be Roman Catholic, none the less.
Then came the ultimate Catholic-Protestant war, in 1618. After the Thirty Years War, the Swedish monarch Christina abdicated and eventually converted to Catholicism (at least on the exterior). She would end up leaving Sweden. Anyone involved in that war could be assumed to have suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome, including Christina. Actually, it should have been called, the Thirty Years War Crime. It also should have been called, Luther's Legacy. If not for Luther, it would never have happened.
Now, until the Tolerance Act of 1781, some Swedes were executed for simply being Catholic. Others were deported. None the less, even after the Tolerance Act, each monarch of Sweden was required to be a Lutheran, until 1995.
The bottom line is that, wherever there was the Legacy of Martin Luther, there was the OPPOSITE of freedom of thought. There was heartless suppression and oppression. The propagandists made Luther out to be a saint, when he was actually a very ornery person. Plus, you could tell that he didn't know what he was doing, when venturing off in the philosophy of civil government. He should not have been regarded as anyone's advisor.
Then came Finland, a Lapland territory . . . and reindeer country
During the 16th Century, Finland was Lutheran in name only. It had a population that was 90% rural, and its "farm folk" were very much devoted to the Virgin Mary. Finns continued to believe in the existence of Purgatory, as well. None the less, their main concern was surviving the Arctic conditions of Finland, during the well documented Little Ice Age of 1280 to 1840 CE.
In summary, the propaganda which states that the Protestant Reformation was a liberating time, where people were allowed to think freely, was a complete and total lie. The Protestants were outright oppressive, and they did put their religious competition to death, time after time after time and again.
Yes, Protestant executed Protestant, in the 16th Century. In fact, in 1529, Luther and Zwingli did meet in Marburg, and they almost came to a friendly alliance. They had a decisive difference in the doctrine of holy communion. So, this would impede Zwingli's ability to have someone cover his flank, in the upcoming Catholic-Protestant warfare in Switzerland. Zwingli was killed in a surprise attack, due to the complete absence of Lutheran allies.
And for the record, Zwingli was a military chaplain BEFORE the 1521 creation of Lutheranism. In fact, he was a chaplain in Italy. However, after 1521, he became the warring party. He carried the same armaments that today's Swiss Guard carries at the Vatican, namely the Halberd. Such a weapon is a combination ax and spear.
Yet, even going into 1530, the Protestant founders, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Catholic bishops hoped for a reconciliation of differences and a re-unification. After all, the Protestants were all raised Catholic, in the first place.
This openness to reconciliation existed in those who realized that a real threat existed in the Ottoman Empire ... of yet another Muslim invasion upon Christian Europe. The most famous three thus far were in: [1] Tours France, in 732, [2] Constantinople (now called Istanbul) in 1453, and [3] Vienna, in 1529. Yet, more massive attacks were coming. One would occur in 1571, where the survival of Christian Europe was put to the task. The other notable one was yet another attack on Vienna, in 1683.
Yet, the result was that the Augsburg Confession was published in 1530, and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V had to deal with the warring Turks without the alliance of Protestant Europe. He also had to deal with the warring French in the 1526 to 1530 Cognac League War. He even had to deal with the warring Republic of Florence, in 1529. So, no unification of European Christians would occur.
A major historic fact to point out is that it was only the Roman Catholics who would put up a fight against the invading Muslim forces. In fact, in latter centuries, Protestants would team-up with Muslim forces, as allies. In fact, Suleiman the Magnificent sent a letter to the Lutherans of Flanders, stating that he felt close to them. The Lutherans should have realized that he was attempting to use them as his useful idiots in destroying the Catholic Church. None the less, a Swedish Protestant king teamed-up with Ottoman Muslims against the Russia Orthodox Peter the Great. In fact . . .
. . . Luther appeared conciliatory toward Muslims, even in showing similarities between the Lutheranism and Islam. Meanwhile, Luther called the Pope the Antichrist, and he literally called the Jews "the Devil Incarnate."
The asininity of Protestant negligence is that, if the Ottomans ended
up beating the Catholics of the Holy Roman Empire, they would have
destroyed all the Protestant jurisdictions there, as well. Therefore,
brave Roman Catholics saved Protestants from certain death, certain pillaging, certain sexual slavery, and other types of slavery.
Yes, the Roman Catholics payed for the
Muslim-Catholic wars of the 16th Century in blood, the loss of life, and
in financial debt. Meanwhile, the Protestants got their safety
entirely for free. In fact, they kept trying to destroy their protectors, the Catholics. And of course, the Protestants got their Bible from
the Roman Catholics without being charged for it. Yet, the Protestants
of today damn the Catholic Church who gave them freedom from the tyranny of Muslims. And concerning the Bible, it is not correct to state that the Catholic Church gave the Protestants the Bible. The Protestants stole it from the Catholic Church.
Protestants didn't even get along with each other
Protestants would disagree with each other in the 16th Century, even within their own sects. In Lutheranism, it was a matter of the Philippists vs the Flacians, etc. Even the Swiss Consensus Tigurinus of 1551 was merely a token gesture, in the attempt to unify and consolidate the Protestant doctrine of holy communion between the newly founded Protestant religions. Protestants executed other Protestants, none the less.
Next came the warring Lutherans, aka the Schmalkaldic League, who directly opposed the Holy Roman Empire. Martin Luther needed armies and war to accomplish his objective. On the other hand, St. Francis of Assisi, three centuries prior, accomplished decisive changes in the Catholic Church without a single soldier, and without being excommunicated. If you want to effect changes in the Church, study Francis of Assisi ... or ask for the intercession of Francis of Assisi, during prayer. You may always pray for great things.
One more point to make here: The 1530 Lutheran publication of Philip Melanchthon needs to be called, the Augsburg PROFESSION OF FAITH, not "confession." That will prevent confusion in the minds of modern-day beginners who are clueless about the 16th Century wars of religion.
Thus far, we have a pattern here: Hard-working folk embraced Catholicism, while the office worker ... the carriage rider ... the inkwell & quill administrator ... embraced the much easier Lutheranism. Historians basically recognized the pattern as Country folk staying Catholic, and 16th Century city slickers becoming Protestant.
At this point, it's important for humanity to see that the "Protestant Reformation" was nothing more than a political movement which necessitated Protestants to force their new religion on Northern Europeans, at the point of a sword. Do you want historic proof of this accusation? It's really easy to point it out:
In Scandinavia, the Roman Catholic priests were on the side of the Peasant Rebellion there. In Germany, Martin Luther thoroughly condemned the rebellion, defaming the very character of hard-working & heavily-burdened peasants.
As was previously mentioned, in 1524 & 1525, after Luther published his condemnation of the German peasants, 90,000 to 100,000 peasants died. Some scholars placed the death toll at a quarter million. This, alone, illustrates that Martin Luther was not pious & peaceful, in any capacity. And he as sure as Hell did NOT believe in freedom of thought ... or in taking time to think things out. He was often in a rage, and it resulted in the loss of life, due to his political influence.
That's the tale of the tape. Catholicism always had a fraternity of kind-hearted folk who looked after the poor ... after orphans ... after captives of Muslim pirates, in contributing money to a Catholic religious order dedicated to paying ransom money, for the release of the kidnap victims of the Muslim pirates. It's Catholicism who had Francis of Assisi, Dominic Guzma, Mother Fontbonne, Mother Drexel, Mother Cabrini, and ... Mother Teresa. Protestantism had very rich men clad in business suits, while on stage and in front of TV cameras, becoming all the more rich with each television broadcast.
This also illustrates that, for the most part, Americans are easily deceived people, falling for whosoever is on mainstream TV network broadcasts. Maybe now you can realize why and how the Germans were so easily deceived in the 1930s. The squeaky wheel gets the oil. The big mouth gets the broadcast time.
England and the alternating current of political power
As far as went the British Isles, both Catholicism and
Protestantism took turns going through the same revolving door, in London's governmental buildings. This is
evidenced by the fact that Protestant Elizabeth had no natural heir. Plus,
the ultimate Catholic killer, Cromwell, would be declared a criminal at the hands of the British government, posthumously. One monarch would
be Protestant. The next one would be Catholic, etc.
The death penalty
for Catholics in England was a painful fad, in the early stages. Then punishments were reduced to
fines, the forfeiture of governmental posts, the inability to inherit land, and even eviction. For
example, under Cromwell, every Roman Catholic was ordered to be evicted from Dublin.
Then came 1834, exactly 300 years after Henry VIII made Catholicism illegal. The same Duke of Wellington who defeated Napoleon became the British prime minister who saw to the complete legalization of Catholicism everywhere, except for the crown of the UK, itself. The UK's monarch was still required to be a Protestant Anglican, even during the reign of Elizabeth II. This is why she would not accept the marriage of Charles and Roman Catholic Camilla Shand. Charles was told to go find a substitute for Camilla. That ended in disaster, as we all know. If you are not going to marry the one you love, then don't get married.
It's noteworthy to point out that the history of mankind is void of the concept of an individual citizen's right to exercise freedom of choice in religion. Religion was viewed as a tribal ... a cultural ... a national identifier, much like an official national language was. None the less, the early Protestants saw the Catholic Church as the competition ... and the represser of their newly proposed thesis statement. The new thesis was that they could commit any sin they wanted and still go to Heaven.
Martin Luther stated, "Sin boldly, and then believe in God's mercy all the more boldly." Well, in the official religion of the empire that dated back to Charlemagne, such an attitude was known as the Sin of Presumption ... of presuming God's mercy, while refusing to cease and desist from a life of mortal sin. There used to be the concept of government guiding people into virtue, where good works, instead of military conquest, was the esteemed goal. That was short-lived.
Concerning the Speyer Protestation of 1529, Emperor Charles V would capitulate to the Protestants for a decade and a half, due to the amount of effort he had to dedicate in defending the eastern part of the empire against aggressive Turks, as well as defending Western sectors against the French. Then, 1546 began a longer series of Protestant-Catholic wars, starting with the Schmalkadic War which involved ten jurisdictions of the Holy Roman Empire who "adopted the new confession" and rebelled against Charles. That is when the Catholic Church was seen as the complete competition of Protestants. Even at that, Catholics had to budget their wars with Protestants, being that the Ottoman Empire and the newly formed French empire kept a coming, in very unfriendly terms.
Ironically, 1546 was the year of Martin Luther's death. None the less, the attempt to win over the Holy Roman Empire was an undertaking done by the sword, and not by preachers walking through towns, persuading people to attend their church services. Their churches services were conductd in stolen churches.
It was never a matter of Protestants separating themselves from the Catholic Church and going their separate ways. It was always a matter of taking over Roman Catholic real estate and infrastructure.
Do you see how ungrateful the anti-Catholic TV Protestants of today are, in their obsession to identify as the Whore of Babylon the Catholic Church which saved them from the invading Muslims? This includes the biggest of the big mouths to ever stand in front of television cameras on a Sunday morning.
Malign the Competition. Malign Your Political Opponent. It's the American Way
Today, we live in the era of TV evangelism and "megachurches." And of course, the Evangelicals, the Pentecostals, and the Baptists definitely treat Catholicism as the competition which must be put out of business. This includes backwoods preachers in the sticks, as much as TV preachers on air. After all, many a TV evangelist and Protestant preacher wear business suits at the pulpit. They're businessmen, and one goal is to get more customers, while keeping the present customers. In America, the way of doing this is to bad-mouth the competition.
These businessmen at the pulpit can financially fare well, if they can convince enough Catholics to leave the Church and join their sect. So, they are motivated to commit a lot of defamation against Catholicism in every way imaginable. They are basically advertisers, telling Catholics that they are using the wrong product and should switch. At the same time, they are assuring that disenchanted Protestants will refrain from looking into Catholicism, simply by telling horrifying stories about Catholicism.
It's like an American politician in a campaign. Mud-slinging until election day. For Protestants, it would be "mudslinging until Judgment Day." Therefore, those TV preachers, internet preachers, radio preachers, and backwoods preachers are nothing more than Satan tempting you to leave the true Church. They run the Fake Church.
With Satan, there is always multiplicity and division, as in, "I am Legion, for we are many." Mark 5:9. The preachers who attack Christ's only Church are nothing more than the Great Dividers who think that they can own God and dictate terms to God, if they can find the pertinent scriptural passage to hold against God.
They believe that all power is in the Bible. They state that faith alone suffices for salvation, apparently clueless to the fact that Martin Luther added the word ALONE. Yet, the same Bible states that good works are absolutely essential for salvation. This is because good works are acts of mercy, and unless you extend mercy in one way or another, you will eternally be in the realm of the merciless. The merciless are never granted mercy. So, in response to all the Evangelical "Bible-only" & "Faith-alone-suffices" preachers, God stated the following, through the Epistle of James:
"For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead." James 2:26.
Salvation by means of rattling off a ten second sound byte
The Anabaptist denomination is the Baptist religion
is the Mennonite religion is the "Born-again" Christian religion. The Anabaptists of the 16th
Century believed that infant baptism was invalid and that you have to be
baptized as an adult. Today, the "Born-again" Christians regard Baptism by water as irrelevant. According to them, you are in need to rattle off a very short
ten second sound byte, in order to be guaranteed life everlasting.
Their doctrine is that, without you parroting that one line, you are not saved. Thus, even if you get baptized, you're still
not "saved," until you do that one-liner. It's instant salvation to them, and it doesn't even require you to add water; not even baptismal water. It's a lot shorter than the Nicene Creed, too. So, what is that
sound byte?
ANS: "I accept you Lord (insert the name of the Nazarene who was born in Bethlehem) as my Lord and Personal Savior." Of course, you must emphasize "personal savior," as if Christ never founded the Catholic Church, and as if he's gonna love you more than today's population of one billion Catholics combined.
That's
it. You do not have need to show any sign of commitment ... any sign of
understanding who the Nazarene really is ... any sign of being resolved to avoid
mortal sin ... any sign of charity toward fellow believers ... any sign
of being willing to have at least a minimal prayer life ... etc. And you are expected to not attend the Rite of Christian Initiation classes. All that you have to do is endlessly call the Roman Catholic Church the Whore of Babylon ... and the Pope the Antichrist ... while throwing your available dollars into the nearest tax-free Pentecostal and/or Baptist and/or Evangelical collection basket, all the while saying, "Praise the Lord" a few times.
Oh, and there's one more thing: You've got to have a seething hatred for the Blessed Virgin Mary. Only then are you saved. Only then are good to go . . . to Hell, that is . . . for the Sins of Presumption, Heresy, Blasphemy, that seething sin of anti-Catholic Anger, and whatever carnal sin or sin against justice that you think Martin Luther allows you to commit, as if Luther replaced Christ and the Celestial Court of angels and saints.
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Hey!!!! Who's that guy sitting in Martin Luther's seat? Jimmy Swaggart will not tolerate this.
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Now, the Pentecostal and Baptist churches which have higher maintenance costs will put water baptism and the Personal Savior Acceptance Incantation together, in baptisms of immersion. They will make that "Lord & Personal Savior" thing look more elaborate and more official. However, they will make it silently implied. Shhhhhh. In that way, more money ends up in the tax-free collection baskets of the high maintenance churches.
Then come the churches which are more three-ring circuses than places of worship. Their central goal is performing miracles, speaking in tongues, something that they call "binding demons," and prophesying. Their goal is sensationalism. They seek to be "baptized in the Spirit," so that they can turn their congregational meeting places into a circus. Apparently, it brings in money ... to the tax-free collection baskets.
The circus atmosphere brings with itself an aura of carnality, as if one is attending a circus in ancient Rome. It breeds arrogance, instead of any type of gratitude, humility, or appreciation. In fact, it causes Pentecostal people to arrogantly strut through life, as in being far too above you.
In response, the fact that John the Baptist was rendered into the State of Grace in his mother's womb at the Visitation proves Biblically that infant baptism in 100% valid. Therefore, this undoes the purpose of Anabaptists, Baptists, Bapticostals, Mennonites, Born-again Christians, etc.
Plus, Jeremiah seems to have been "sanctified" in his mother's womb. This would also support infant baptism. The conclusion as to Jeremiah's state of soul before his birth is not definite, at least when reading the Book of Jeremiah. None the less, the only Church ever founded by Christ green-lights infant baptism and requires no "rebaptism of adults." For those reaching adulthood, the Catholic Church has the Sacrament of Confirmation ... after baptism.
In some Protestant sects, there is something called, "Baptism of Believers" which is contrasted to "Baptism of Children." The bottom line is this: What about all those people who die as children and never reach adulthood? Denying child baptism doesn't sound very fair.
The de facto Anabaptist doctrine is that God withholds his grace and Spirit from children, since God doesn't recognize child baptism. That would mean that God is the God of no child. But, God is everywhere, involved in all things. This is one of the reasons why there were a string of Protestant-Catholic wars.
Protestantism lead to Nihilism
Let's
absorb the understanding of how a 500 year old heresy leads to
nihilism. The
Anabaptists of the 16th Century claimed that infant
baptism was invalid. Today, their spiritual descendants claim that all
baptism is
invalid, unless you do that silly 10 second incantation which makes you
sound like a little kid playing it-taggers, all the while trying to be
immune from being "it." To them, salvation is speaking as if you are a
politician on the 6 O'clock news, being given 15 seconds of airtime.
Can't they think of other things to say?
And then there was the endless use of the phrase, "Praise the Lord," amongst those who arrogantly called themselves "saved." No matter what happened that wasn't tragic, someone would call out, "Praise the Lord." It was sooo annoying to hear this over and over, again and again. You felt like shouting, "Would you please shut the @#$% up." It sounded like a cross between superstition and neurosis.
So, what did Christ say about this endless repetition of, "Praise the Lord"? In fact, what did Christ say about those who claim to be "baptized in the Spirit" and perform miracles ... or speak in tongues ... or have prophecies to share ... or who perform a layman's version of exorcism? The answer to both questions comes from the Gospel of Matthew, at Ch 7 v 21 to 23:
The True Disciple.
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
22 Many will say to me on that day,
‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out
demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’
23 Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’
Thus, the Bible expressly testifies that, simply because you speak in tongues, it doesn't mean that you're going to Heaven, after you die. It doesn't mean that you're a saint. This assertion is 100% Biblical.
Luther's writings are NOT the Bible. So, why do you read him, Sola Scriptura people?
If these "born-again Christians" are so much into the Bible-only doctrine, then why did
they keep Luther's writings? Shouldn't those writings have been
thrown-out, for the sake of the Bible-only doctrine of Sola Scriptura?
And if that's the case, then shouldn't they ignore the 382 CE Roman Catholic Church Council of Rome, where the specific books of the New Testament were officially defined as such? The only way in which Protestants got the Bible in the first place was from the Roman Catholic Church. It was the same Catholic Church which catalogued it, kept track of it, and protected it.
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Representation of the Siege of Vienna, 1683
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If the Born-agains are so anti-Catholic, then they should throw-out the New Testament which is only the New Testament, because the Roman Catholic Church said it was. Therefore, the Bible has to be declared as evil as the Catholics who protected it throughout the centuries. Therefore, Protestants should burn all Bibles.
By the way, did the Born-agains ever mention which one of the 266 popes is the Antichrist, being that there is only one more Antichrist yet to come?
And why do they still use the Latin language and the Roman Catholic dates for Christmas and Easter, if they hate the ROMAN Catholic Church so much? Hello? Is anybody home?
Why do they even follow the Gregorian Calendar, being that, according to them, Pope Gregory and every other pope was the Antichrist? They should develop the new Born-again Christian Saved Calendar. They can replace the months of January, February, and March with Swaggart, Bakker, and Roberts.
The next three months of that calendar can be Hinn, Angley, and Hagee. Then you can go classical and name the other months ~Luther, ~Zwingli, ~Calvin, ~Tudor (after Elizabeth and NOT schismatic Henry), ~Cromwell, and ~von Bora. Leap Day can be called ~Paisley ... or Ian. If you are not familiar with these names, then simply ask any Irish Catholic who had an ancestor or two who die at the hands of Protestant invaders. They were worse than the Vikings, because the Vikings eventually converted to Catholicism.
And what does Jesus have to say about the concept of "accepting" him "as your Lord & Personal Savior," anyway? The answer comes from the Gospel of John, in John quoting Jesus during the Last Supper:
It was not you who chose me, but rather I who chose you ... John Ch 15 verse 16.
No-humility means no-salvation, no matter how many times you read the Bible and claim to be its greatest "saved" interpreter. Keep in mind that the typical "born-again Christian" believed himself to be his own personal pope who can interpret anything. That's arrogance.
And in response to the endless Protestant accusation that Catholics have forsaken the Bible and never use it:
The Bible is officially read in the Roman Catholic Church MULTIPLE TIMES daily, in the Liturgy of the Hours, otherwise known as the Divine Office ... and in the Roman Catholic Mass.
The Bible is read out loud THREE TIMES at Sunday Mass, and two times at week day Mass. In monasteries & convents, there is pre-dawn Vigils (it was at 3:40am at the Trappist monastery where I stayed), Lauds (after sunrise), Terce (my personal favorite in my Trappist guesthouse days), Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. Add scriptural classroom instruction throughout the Catholic academic world, as well. In as much, the Bible very much was read in Catholic classrooms in the course of any school day ... and at night, for adult education courses.
In conclusion, the claim that Catholics never use the Bible is 100% false. They use it FAR MORE OFTEN than Protestants ever did. You don't spend 2,000 years making copies of the Bible in monasteries throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, just so that you could hide it from people and make sure that they never read it. If Catholics wanted to hide the Bible from humanity, Catholics would have stopped making copies of it. Do you finally see how stupid anti-Catholics are?
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If the Roman Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon, then how did it produce copies of the Bible for centuries?
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One further question, at this point: Do the born-agains even know what " being saved" means?
ANS: The first
thing that you have to be, in order to be saved, is . . . dead. Being saved doesn't happen until you have just died. Then,
as soon as you enter into the vast spiritual abyss, you get instantly assessed by Christ, to see if he and his eternal father recognize you. If the Eternal Father sees within you some element of virtue that he sees in his eternally begotten son, then you get rescued from the
"clutches" of demons, by the angels of Christ ... or by the Blessed Virgin Mary ... or by a couple of
saints acting in unison.
The rescue consists in you being spiritually swooped-up and given a spiritual avenue to go to where the demons are not able to sink their proverbial claws into you. That translates into Purgatory or Heaven.
Moreover, if you lived a devout life, as opposed to a minimal one, someone from Heaven will literally be positioned to take you to safety the moment you die. The process by which this happens is as instantaneous as the speed of light. Doctor of the Church, St. Therese of the Child Jesus, wrote of this. But, this topic is for another discourse.
All in all, an instantaneous entrance into the Celestial court includes you being given the grace to act in virtue the moment you die. It involves you countering all the interference that demons attempt to thrust on you.
Now, if God the Father recognizes nothing in you that reminds him of his son, and if the Son of God "knows you not," then the demons take full charge of you ... forever. After all, it is written, "Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed,
into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." Matthew 25:41 Very simply, if you die in the state of mortal sin, you become forever damned.
Being saved means being saved from your sins, and ultimately being saved
from the demons who tempt people into sin. After all, it is written, ... you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” Matthew 1:21. Therefore, if you "sin boldly," while "trusting in the mercy of God even more boldly," then you're not saved. Rather, you are a walking sin.
Concerning the HEBREW meaning of salvation, it refers being rescued. --- יֶשַׁע .--- Yesha or Yasha. It means being made safe ... as in being delivered from the middle of the great abyss at the moment of death, and in no longer being unprotected prey that can get taken by the demons.
In Latin, this same concept is in Salvare. Yet, the Hebrew word for saved is very similar to the Hebrew name of Jesus. This is because Jesus means "Yahweh is salvation." . . . "Yahweh is rescue." . . . "Yahweh is deliverance." In Greek, he's Iesous. In Latin, he's Iēsūs. In French, Spanish, and English, he's Jesus. In Hollywood, his name is endlessly used in vain.
In review, "being saved" does NOT mean having a reservation for a condominium in Heaven. The concept, instead, is that of having the bully demons unhanded from you ... taken away from you ... disconnected from you. The concept of being saved is somewhat like having gotten "a demonectomy" --- a demon...ectomy, as in being freed from Satan. After all, it is written, " Indeed, the Son of God was revealed, in order to destroy the works of the devil." 1 John 3:8
All in all, the true Biblical image of salvation is that of Christ freeing you ... and of you "washing your garments white," by means of penance and/or the seven works of spiritual mercy and/or the seven works of corporal mercy, and/or making restitution for injustice, and/or prayer, and/or Bible reading and/or going on retreats operated by clergy and/or a stay in Purgatory after departing this realm of existence, etc.
The bottom line is that Jesus came to save his people from their sins. If you live a life of sin ... on weekends ... or whenever ... then you are NOT saved, at all. You are metaphysically still in the clutches ... in the grip ... of demons who want to mangle and destroy you as much as they can.
And quite frankly, if demons could take you entirely out of existence, they would have done it, already. But, they are NOT the creator. So, they torment you forever, wishing that you were never created, in the first place. Their root cause of anger is ENVY. They basically are assaulting the billions of souls in Hell, because God became man, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and not angel.
Concerning Heaven and Hell, if you were to have a vision of Hell, the population there would look massive to you. If you were to have a vision of Heaven, the population there would look massive to you.
The Book of Revelation writes the following about Heaven: "Nothing unclean will enter." This is why Luther wanted to take the Book of Revelation out of the Protestant Bible.
Remember, Luther could not conquer the evil gnawing within him. So, he became the evil. In as much, Luther's doctrine is the doctrine of shear laziness ... neglect ... indifference ... ingratitude ... presumption. He didn't see Jesus as a divine being who saved you from your sins. Rather, he defined Jesus as someone who lets you get away with living in your sins. Therefore, Luther stated that Christ was a powerless savior who didn't save you at all. According to Luther, Christ is merely the bar-bouncer who "lets you slide" and come into the glamorous discotheque (night club), anyway.
Concerning the Old Testament books
that Luther did leave out of the Protestant Bible, they were written in
Greek instead of Hebrew, in as far as concerns the translations which were done in Egypt, during the Ptolemaic rule of Egypt ... in Alexandria. (See: Septuagint.)
Removing 7 books from the Old Testament had nothing to do with
a holy man discerning the texts, as if he were having visions on a
mountain top. Thus, Protestants are the ones who hide the Bible from humanity, in leaving out the Word of God in multiple books thereof.
None
the less, the great contradiction of Luther is that the New Testament
was written in Greek. So, why did he remove the Greek texts of the Old
Testament? ANS: Because the Jewish rabbis didn't use them.
Here's Luther's second great contradiction: He followed the Jews as if they were his superiors in religion. Yet, Luther wrote that all Jews should be kicked out of Germany and NOT consulted as experts in anything. Luther ended up calling the Jews "the Devil incarnate."
This is typical of Luther. For example, he condemned the Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon. Yet, he stated that the Catholic Church "gave us the Bible." Well, the truth is that Lutherans stole the Bible from the Catholic Church, to make their new religion appear valid and official in the eyes of God.
BTW, the Bible expressly states that not everything is in the Bible ... in the Gospel of John. You will not be able to contain the Infinite God in a few hundred pages of written text. Belief that everything in existence is based on the Bible is a sins of idolatry. It's the worship of the Bible. It places the Bible above God.
The Bible in Picture-form
The Catholics are the only ones who made the New & Old Testaments available to humanity for centuries, despite the Muslim invasions of France, Sicily, Sardinia, Hungary, Austria, Slavic regions, and Italy, as well as the invasion of various barbarian armies into Europe. In fact, many stained-glass church windows are the Bible in picture form.
Stained-glass Bible pictures were for the illiterate. This would be in keeping with Christ having said (to two of John the Baptist's disciples,) "The poor have the Gospel preached to them." Luke 7:22. Stained-glass window art is the Medieval way of preaching the Gospel to the poor ... to the illiterate.
Being that stained-glass window pictures are mostly Biblical ... or historical ... this is why it is completely asinine for Protestants to call stained-glass windows a violation against the 2nd Commandment. Such a window would only be a sin of idolatry, ONLY if it preached belief in the Roman gods or in a pagan deity or in a false Messiah or in Satan himself. All stained-glass church windows present a picture that involves the belief that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God made Man.
Protestant Heaven is Marxist Communist Heaven
Those who are in Heaven know that Heaven is NOT the Marxist Communist place that Protestants vehemently insist it is. For those unaware, Protestantism teaches that there are no varying degrees of glory in Heaven; that all beings there are of the same one Communist, Leninist grade. Yet, there exist the seven Seraphim in their tremendously high degree of glory in Heaven, along with almost as highly graded Cherubim and Thrones, thereby demolishing the Protestant Communist Heaven doctrine in one fell swoop. (That "one fell swoop" phrase comes from Act 4, Scene 3 of MacBeth, by the way.)
In review, Christ is not a mirage. He's for real. He was the Son of Mary on
Earth and remains so in eternity. This means that he honors his mother the way in which a king of the universe would do so. Thus, he does NOT ignore her, and he certainly does NOT have the Protestant hatred for her. Neither does anyone else in Heaven have that kind of hatred for her.
In addition, Satan hates Mary far more than he hates Christ, because, without the Virgin Mary, there would have been no Jesus Christ, in first the place. As long as there was a living Ark of the Covenant destined to be made on Earth, God was coming --- from outside of time & space.
Concerning the Born-again Christian claim that you are forever "saved," once you do that very short and equally mindless "Lord & personal savior" incantation:
Q: What actually does happen to those people who stop believing in the Nazarene, altogether? How are they "saved," when they end up professing an entirely different being as God and/or the Enlightened One and/or the Godhead and/or the higher power and/or the Messiah and/or the Great Spirit and/or the Way? It has happened repeatedly. Someone "saved" suddenly announces that he/she has a new religion which doesn't recognize the Nazarene as anything divine or anyone commissioned by God.
In as much, denying the Nazarene as the savior is known as Apostasy. Presenting the Nazarene in a distorted way is known as Heresy. As was already mentioned, heresy means to pick and choose only part of the whole doctrine presented by Paul ... and Peter ... and James, etc.
All in all, there is no such thing as being instantly and forever saved, as much as there is no such thing as the "Great Rapture." Such things are the lazy man's doctrine. Protestantism is the lazy man's doctrine, until it comes to lynching and taking over Catholic Church property. That is when they all get energized and ready to go.
Doctrinal Graffiti
Ironically, the
elector, Frederick III, died in 1525, ten days before the Battle
of Frankenhausen, where 5,000 peasants died in a two-day period. The Elector of Saxony was not going to profit from his very deadly ploy. His ploy was that of disobeying the Holy Roman Emperor and not arresting Luther. If he arrested Luther, hundreds of thousands would not have died in the various Catholic-Protestant wars which were already in progress, the worse of which being the one which started in 1618 and lasted (on and off) until 1648.
Many
people today despise Christianity without realizing that it's
Protestantism that actually repulses them. People today rarely see
Catholicism in America, because the "Vatican II reformers" attempted to
make Catholicism look as easy to follow as business suit Protestantism.
The result was that the Sense of the Majestic ... of the Sacred ... was
left to fad away. So, the result was that of a very profane image of
Christ. Protestantism has been nothing more than the secularization of
Christ. It's image of Christ eventually became the spiritual version
of subway graffiti.
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Posted a second time, to accentuate the pertinence of Hitler's people praising Luther.
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1933 poster: “Hitler's Kampf und Luther's Lehr Des deutschen Volkes gute Wehr." "Hitler’s struggle and Luther’s teaching are the German people’s sure defense.
Now,
concerning the vast array of Protestant sects and their traditional despising of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the females among them are envious that they couldn't be the
Mother of the Savior. They're jealous of Mary. It's that simple ---
and that simple-minded. Plus, they don't want to admit to Mary's purity, so that they don't have to strive for purity, themselves. Do not be deceived. Some of them love "the low-down & dirty," whatever that actually means.
Concerning those who despise the Pope, it's
only because the most vehement Protestant is envious that he's not the
pope, himself. As a result, the followers of Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, Conrad Grebel, John
Knox, Thomas Muntzer, etc ended up developing a splintered religion
where everyone can now declare himself his own personal pope. Yes, today
they all get a "participation trophy" --- in their minds. During the
1520s, however, the "Protestant Reformers" were at each others' throats,
condemning each other. For example . . .
. . . Calvin put to death the very educated Michael Servetus. Elizabeth I sentenced many a Protestant to death, and she was a Protestant herself. And of course, Zurich Switzerland's very Protestant city council put to death Felix Manz, Jacob Falk, and Henry Reiman, by drowning them. Being that the three men were Anabaptists, the drowning of them was done in sarcasm, where the executions where referred to as their "third baptism."
In addition, Balthasar Hubmaier was put in a prison so unhealthy that he was basically sentenced to near death, followed by him giving-in and recanting his Anabaptist beliefs in public - - - at the hands of the staunch Protestants of Zurich. Martin Luther started no reform. He started war and mass execution.
And let us not forget that Luther was the first German to advocate in writing the expulsion of the Jews from German boundaries. Luther furthermore directed that it only be done at the hands of government officials in Germany, and not by the common folk. Well, centuries later, a certain German government complied with Luther's suggestion and turned it into a graphic reality.
Luther's Literature: The Undoing of Christ's Work
Do not be deceived. There was NO
Protestant Reformation. There was only war after war, even into 1712. In fact, the 1555 Peace of Augsburg was merely a temporary truce between Catholics and
the newly formed Lutherans. All other religions were left out of the
equation. Despite the 1555 truce, Protestant-Catholic warfare continued in
France, until 1598. The events, politics, and scorecard on that time span was super complicated, especially the deadly & vengeful dominoes effect of 1572. It was even cloak & dagger in the unfolding of event. That time span would be for its own discourse ... chapter ... article ... webpage. It can't be reduced to one paragraph. So we move onward.
All in all, Martin Luther's century ... and the century to follow ... were
the centuries of War. In as much, it was St. Francis of Assisi who brought peace to
his geographic setting, in the 13th Century. It was St. Dominic who
brought peace to Southern France, during the lifetime of St. Francis. Luther
brought mass amounts of death, even centuries later, at the hands of Adolph Hitler who literally used Luther as a Nazi Party Poster Boy. Yes, hatred of the Jews is a part of
Luther's literature, as in the Jews and Their Lies. Hitler ran with it ... with Luther's hatred of the Jews.
Theft the size of a continent
Luther
heavily advocated stealing Roman Catholic Church property, as well.
But of course, he didn't
regard it as theft. He regarded it as driving the wolves from the sheep
fields and then having good and holy stewards manage the stolen
property. This would be followed by the stealing of Jewish property, centuries later. He who started the divisive Protestant religions was also the
poster-boy at the start of the Nazi Religion. Luther was originally
Hitler's pope, dating back to 1933. Very simply, evil is attracted to
evil.
In addition, it was a complete lie to have asserted that Luther "had a premonition of his own death" and that he confessed his sins shortly before dying. Firstly, he predicted that he would die in Wittenberg. Luther died in Eisleben (in Saxony-Anhalt.) Plus, he was aging and simply talked about aging and what was the point in being alive in the first place. Something similar to this train of thought. In as much, bitterly complaining about life, while drinking pints of beer and/or ale, is NOT the act of confessing your sins.
Hitler's Birthday Gift to Luther
Ever-so-ironically, the disastrous Krystallnacht of
November 9 & 10 (1938), took place on the 455th birthday of Martin Luther,
and it was triggered by a young Polish Jew in France who assassinated a
German diplomat, on Nov 7 of that year. Herschel Feibel Grynszpan killed Ernst vom
Rath, triggering tens of thousands of Jews being immediately sent to
concentration camps which were actually ready for business in 1933. In less than one year after Grynszpan's act of hot-blooded rage, Poland was invaded. WWII began. More importantly, in less than one week, Jewish property was vandalized at the point of torches and bricks.
Incidentally, the first class of people to receive Nazi concentration camp hospitality were the disabled. Then the gypsies were soundly exterminated. In fact, 2,579 Catholic priests were sent to Dachau, to die, proving that Hitler and Pius XII were NOT conspiratorial pro-Nazi buddies. There were not that many priests in Central Europe, to begin with. Priests are naturally a minority everywhere, due to the nature of their work. Yet, Hitler gave priests the big x-out ... the big black-out ... the big Nazi farewell.
All in all, the tragic occurrences of WWI and WWII were
both triggered by asinine youths with guns, causing millions of deaths
after their acts of murder. So, if you are wondering how
WWIII is going to start . . .
Protestants
didn't merely separate themselves from the Catholic Church. They
separated themselves from each other, in forming sect after sect after
sect. After all, Martin Luther and his sidekick, Phillip Melanchthon,
condemned the Anabaptists, expressly stating
that every member of that sect deserved the death penalty. In Switzerland, Anabaptist leaders got the death penalty Luther suggested. Zwingli was
soundly condemned by Luther also, as well as was Thomas Muntzer, in his
adopted project. That adopted project was the supporting of the German Peasant Rebellion of
1524-25.
In addition, the Swiss Protestant Ulrich Zwingli most certainly was in the possession of deadly armaments when he died in the Second Battle of Kappel, in 1531. He regularly carried a sword AND a halberd which is carried by the Vatican's Swiss Guard to this day. It's just that the armies of the five Catholic cantons performed a surprise attack, when a lot of the Swiss Protestant soldiers had their pants down ... sometimes literally. Zwingli was in the "second line," and he still was caught off-guard. Thus, he was NOT a mild, unarmed chaplain, as lying propagandists made him out to be. Even today's Protestants lie, to make their founders look good.
Zwingli had his share of personal armaments which easily could take a human life or two or more. He was as willing to kill as much as he was willing to "live in sin." Meanwhile, Protestant propagandists are willing to lie in their writings, probably for the sake of getting added tax-free collection basket donations and book sales. Don't be deceived. Zwingli was no saint.
In addition, there were certain Catholic commanders during the Protestant-Catholic wars who were no saints, either. Add the Spanish Catholic commanders who oversaw the sacking of Catholic Rome.
At this point remember that the geographic region which gave humanity Martin Luther
also gave humanity Adolph Hitler. There were massacres centuries prior
to Hitler's reign, dating back to the Black Death of 1348 - 1350, and
also during other times --- in the same Germanic region.
Yes, Jews were blamed for the Black Death. None the less, always remember: Martin Luther was the undoing of Christ. Hitler was the confirmation thereof.
In the modern era,
Protestant sects even have sub-subsects, as is the case with
Pentecostalism which has 32 sub-subsects divided between two subsects.
In fact, there's even a Bapticostal Movement. Protestantism is a
tossed salad. It's a grab bag used as a party favor. It's an abstract
art painting on a museum wall which compels a viewer to say, "What the Hell is that?"
To
divide and conquer has been the game Satan has been playing all along,
in splintering the Church of Christ as if it were a board of thinned-out
wood. And remember, Satan is envious of mankind, because God willed to
become Man, instead of angel. Thus, Satan wants mankind annihilated.
After all, it is written, "However, through the envy of the Devil, death came into the world." Wisdom 2:24.
Disunity
is the definition of Protestantism, in its divergent sects and in its
dissimilar doctrines between the sects. And of course, division is the
Way of Satan, as in "My name is Legion, for we are many." (Luke 8:30 & Mark 5:9)
Protestantism discards Mary, as if she were the most worthless being in existence. The fact that God the Father called Mary, "highly favored daughter,"
(through the Archangel Gabriel) means nothing to the Protestant world.
The fact that Christ's closest apostle, John, took in Mary and made her
a member of his household for life, equally means nothing to these
people. The fact that the Early Church Fathers regarded
Mary as the Ark of the Covenant is even more meaningless to these
people.
Even though the Tilma of Guadalupe shows
all the science markers of a miraculous image, it means nothing to the Protestant world. Lourdes Water is ignored by these apathetic people, too. Their
indifference also applies to miraculous hosts, miraculously produced
oils, and stigmatic saints, as well as authentically incorruptible
saints such as Louis of Montfort, Catherine Laboure, Bl Margaret of Savoy, St. Savina Petrilli, and Ubald of Gubbio. Yet, they all claim that God talks to them, in "a word of knowledge." They talk about being baptized in the Spirit and performing long-distance miracles, as well as performing a version of exorcism. So, they do not deny supernatural phenomenon ... only when Catholics perform the miracles.
TV evangelists, since the beginning of broadcasting, claimed numerous miracles with zero investigators confirming the claims. That is to say, they have no Lourdes Bureau to investigate anything. They will say that someone far away here and someone far away there were miraculously cured of this and miraculously cured of that. Yet, never mentioned the who and the where. Their followers apparently don't believe that people on TV are capable of lying ... or of even being criminally indicted for fraud in a 4th Circuit district court, on 24 counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy ... or for racketeering & grand theft in Florida ... or embezzlement ... etc. (All the aforementioned things actually occurred.)
A certain low-level church employee who was caught stealing
from his employer on a long-term basis once said that adhering to a
Protestant sect "is just another way to go to Heaven." No, it isn't.
It's just another way to go to Hell. At its inception, it was a way of bringing Hell to Planet Earth. Those were brutal times.
