Who is the Woman Riding the Beast in Rev. 17?

As God says, we need food in due season, and we're going over the false religious system, its origins, its history. Those copies I've given you will just give you an outline of the five principal doctrines and how they are taught by most of the world's religions today. And I plan to finish this series, God willing, next Sabbath, and with it I'll give you a graph of another tree, the tree of life, and a history with the five true doctrines as the roots and then the trunk all the way to the time of the kingdom of God. So I'm looking forward to giving you that handout next week. And we're almost a month away from Christmas. We know all the hubbub is going on. We're going to be bombarded by music at this time, sales, and my wife and I personally, we're so happy we don't have to go through all this merry-go-round and buying things to people that usually you wouldn't do so, but you just feel obligated and all of the things, comparing whether the gifts they get are as good as the ones that you get, all of those things that become part of society. We don't have any problems with giving gifts. And by the way, if somebody gives you gifts, say thank you and whatever. Just don't participate. They don't get anything back, they won't give you usually another one, so you won't have to worry about that. But as it tells us in John 8, 31, and 32, I'm going to read it from the contemporary English version where Christ said, if you keep on obeying what I have said, you truly are my disciples. You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. It will set you free from all the religious lies and errors that there are. And that was something that Christ promised us if we truly do obey what he said, when it's a part of God's Word. And the world is deceived. Most people have no idea this is going on. And remember that we are to love the person, but hate the sin. And so, they're very fine people of different religions. So we should not look down on them or forcibly try to convert them. We should give them an example and be ready to give the answers to those things that they ask us. And that's part of why we're here, to learn more about God's Word so we can share it with those that are interested and primarily to put them into our practice, our lives. Put them into action. Because that's the way you give a better example to others. It tells us in Colossians chapter 4, Colossians chapter 4, verses 5 and 6, the attitude we should have. We shouldn't be stern and harsh. We shouldn't talk down to people or try to live their lives. It tells us in Colossians 4 verse 6. And I'm going to read it from the God's... You're the Good News Bible version. It says in verse 6, Let your speech always be pleasant and interesting, and you should know how to give the right answer to everyone. So we should be diplomatic. We shouldn't be harsh. We shouldn't be austere and stern. That's not the way Christ was, and that's not the way we should be. And especially with the knowledge that we are receiving, it's powerful because it's almost like lifting the blinders from your eyes. And yeah, oh, now I see. I see the truth in God's Word.

And so we are going to cover the fourth characteristic of the woman writing the beast in Revelation 17. It's part of God's Word. There in 2 Timothy 3, 16, and 17, it tells us all scripture is inspired by God. And so this is inspired by God, and he expects us for his children to understand and to share it with others. And so the last time we went through Revelation 17, 1 and 2, talking about that harlot, why it's mentioned this way, and she's over many waters, and that she's writing a beast. We went through those three characteristics. But now we're going to go to verses 4, through 6 of Revelation 17. I'll read it here. Revelation 17, 4 through 6. It says, The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. And on her forehead a name was written, Mystery Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots, and of the abominations of the earth. I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement. So we're going to focus first on the woman arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls. So the first thing to identify her properly, besides the three characteristics we already covered, is that she has to be extremely rich as a church that has taken the colors of the Roman emperors and their choria. Choria is the name they used in Italian for all of the administration under the leader of the Catholic Church. Choria was used in the Roman Empire as the administrative center where the emperors ruled. And so this was transferred over to the Choria, but in the Roman Church. Henry Hallie, in his Bible Handbook, says, quote, Augustine, who lived in 440 A.D., wrote The City of God in which he envisioned a universal Christian empire. This book had advanced influence in molding opinion favorable to a universal church hierarchy under one head. So Augustine was kind of the intellectual power. He was the mastermind who thought up all of these things how the church should actually be in charge with one person, and that this would spread and conquer the world. And that this was the millennium that actually was described in the Bible, but that this would be the reign of the church over the world. This book had vast influence, and it says this promoted Rome's claim for lordship. In other words, to be in charge. Thus, the church was changing in nature. This wasn't what Peter and all the apostles envisioned, making itself over into the image of the Roman Empire. So was this something that Christ said that they would eventually become this big, powerful state and religious center? No, it wasn't.

What happened was that this particular church compromised with the truth. Will Durant, in his massive volumes of called the story of civilization back in the 40s and 50s, he wrote that, won the Pulitzer Prize. He was agnostic, and he was a historian. He wrote two volumes on Christianity and the Roman Empire. I'm just finishing the second volume myself because I've seen so many quotes through the years.

I wanted to see it for myself, read the context of these two books. He says, while Christianity converted the world, the world converted Christianity and displayed the natural paganism of mankind. So you see, it became compromised. Referring to the Emperor Constantine back in the 300s, he says, by his aid, Christianity became a state as well as a church and the mold for 14 centuries of European life and thought.

So from the 300s, 1400 years, almost to the 1800s, this was what dominated Europe at the time, church and state. When Christianity conquered Rome, the ecclesiastical structure, or the church structure of the pagan church, talking about the Roman pagan church, the title investments, which means the dress of the Pontifex Maximus, that was the chief pagan priest, was called Pontifex Maximus, the maximum priest. The worship of the great mother who became Mary, worship, and a multitude of comforting divinities because you not only had Mary, but you had Joseph, you had all of these saints that you prayed to.

But the Romans, in paganism, they had their divinities who they prayed to as mediators. It says, the joy or solemnity of old festivals, the church took them over. And the pageantry of immemorial ceremony passed like maternal blood into the new religion, and captive Rome captured her conqueror. So you see, that's this mix. It became this old system, actually was incorporated into the new Roman church system.

Now again, these are men that you can look this up, and there are multiple authors, historians, and they'll concur with this. Even Catholic historians will be quite candid about this because it's part of world history. Now, the Bible knowledge commentary on Revelation 17 verse 4, it says here about the woman, her adornment is similar to that of religious trappings of ritualistic churches today. Those that have all of these rites and all these costumes that they put on, and all of the golden cups, and all the fancy gold threads and jewels that they have.

It says, while purple, scarlet, gold, precious stones, and pearls can all represent beauty and glory in relation to the true faith, here they reveal a false religion that prostitutes the truth. So this is from the Bible knowledge commentary composed of scholars. These aren't some wild-eyed fanatics. Now, these are careful historians and scholars who cover these things. I once visited the Vatican Museum that they actually brought a section to Ohio in Cincinnati years ago, probably 12 years ago. I remember I went with another minister and it said that this was what the Vatican had lent so they could put this out. So we went to it and we saw all of the trappings, all of the apparel, and it flabbergasted us.

It crusted rubies and diamonds on all of this that the popes wear, and they've worn it through. I mean, all of these things are part of the Vatican Museum. And just like sometimes they'll bring things over from Egypt, and you can watch them here and go to the local museum, they brought this, which was from the Vatican. And the amount of gold, silver, pearls, diamonds, it was incredible. They had to have armed guards because there were millions of dollars worth of things. And just from what you wear. Notice that the woman had a golden cup, not just a tin cup. No, it was very valuable. Full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication.

And so I want to focus on that cup. Why does God say there are abominations and filthiness inside that cup that the woman gives to the nations to drink? Remember what it tells us in Revelation 17. In verse 2, it says, this is the great harlot with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication.

So here God is focusing. Here's the cup, that cup that people drink from and become drunk. It's almost like this fanaticism comes in and no longer is there a discussion about beliefs. No, it is just one way what is taught from the Vatican that spreads throughout the entire world. It's still a monarchial system.

It's based on one ruler over everything. And they actually own everything. All of these churches here in Orange County and everything else, ultimately it goes all the way to the pope can dispose of anything. I don't know how many read in the paper, I just read it today, that they're having a big scandal in Maryland because the attorney general of the state made an investigation on one of the diocese, which are the there's three of them in Maryland, just one of them, and they went back and they requisitioned all the old files of all of the abuses, cases, and afterwards the attorney general who had the over 400 page report said it made me physically sick to read about 600 cases of children being abused by 185 priests that were moved from one place to the other.

And that's just one diocese, not even the other two. See, all of this has been covered up. And we want to again just look at things. There's a golden cup that has made the nations and there are people just follow blindly. I know because my mother is that way. She's a wonderful lady, but she is completely brainwashed. And what the pope says is what goes. Doesn't matter. So this is what happens that you don't examine the scriptures to see what to believe in.

So we're going to look at the cup because I've never studied this so in depth and just want to share with you what's in the Bible about it. Now, the nations drink of her wine, which has to do principally with her teachings. That's what you drink of. That's when you go to church. These doctrines are taught. And God calls them an abomination. The word study dictionary says the word abomination means to emit a foul odor, something that smells awful. That's what an abomination is in the Bible. Nobody likes to smell foul odor. Well, that's what God considers. That wine has a foul odor. It's not something enjoyable for God. It goes on to say that which is detestable to God and especially impure idol worship. Now, how many have had the chance to visit the Vatican sometime? Oh, I guess about half the congregation has gone there. How many images can you count? I mean, if the Vatican Museum is just full of them and people are there kneeling down to all of these images. And, of course, the false teachings that people swallow thinking they are following God and the Bible. Many are sincere, dedicated people and have good sound morals as well. Now, the key of the identity of this woman that is found allied to this beast goes into, and if you look in Revelation, the answer is here. But people do not have the capacity to put it together. It's through God's Spirit that we can do this. I could never figure anything out unless it was because we found the truth and we are able through God's Spirit. Notice, okay, who is exactly this woman? Very easy. Let's go to Revelation 13. Revelation 13. It's like two plus two is four, but it's very hard to relate and be able to show it to others. Let's go to Revelation 13, verse 1. It says, then I stood on the sand of the sea and I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his horns ten crowns, and on his heads a blasphemous name. It's exactly what it tells us in Revelation 17. So, okay, we've identified the first beast, and that is the Roman Empire that absorbed the previous, the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Greek Empire. Rome conquered the Greek Empire, which had absorbed the other ones before, so now Rome was the one that took over. So, there's no question about this beast because it's explained in Daniel and it's explained here. And so, if the beast is described as the first beast here, Revelation 17, who is the second beast? Let's look. Verse 11. And I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon, and he exercises all authority of the first beast in his presence, and it causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. So, this is a religious figure, and he is focusing the worship of all these people on the earth toward the first beast. Well, this is the woman. This is the one that's riding the beast and guiding it. This second beast described here is also called the false prophet in Revelation. Let's go there. In chapter 16, in verse 13 and 14, see, in a sense now, the symbolism is removed, and now you see who are the ones who are heading the two systems. Revelation 16, in verse 13, it says, Then I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. So, here we got Satan and the two henchmen that he has on the earth. One is the military political leader, and the other one is a religious leader called a false prophet. We know in the Bible a prophet is a minister. It's a religious leader. Let's go to chapter 19, in verse 20.

Here it even explains it in more detail. At the end, when Christ returns, he's going to fight these two leaders and the armies that they muster up. Verse 20, it says, Then the beast was captured. So here, it's a human being that has been in charge of this empire, and now he's given the powers by Satan. He's going to rise up and conquer most of this world for a short period of time. The beast was captured, and with him the false prophet. So, the henchman. This is the woman, because it explains exactly what this false prophet does. By which he deceives those who receive the mark of the beast and those who worship his image. So, this is the deceiver, the religious deceiver. And so in Revelation 17, it's just another picture of these two powerful leaders and their religious and state systems. They're in cahoots together. This hasn't happened for, oh, when was the last time? Two centuries when the Pope and the Emperor were together. We had Napoleon being crowned by the Pope back in 1804. And then we had Mussolini signing the Concordat, which is a type of a pact with the Pope, giving him back the territory of Vatican City. The Pope had lost that back in 1870 when Garibaldi and others beat the Pope and the armies backing the Pope. They lost it. And so Garibaldi united the Italian Peninsula and took the central cities, there were about 20, that were ruled over by the Pope. So the Pope became stateless until Mussolini, under this pact, gave back that little area of Vatican City. So yes, there's still, and then Hitler signed his Concordat with the Pope in 1933, which allowed Hitler a free hand to be able to have the Catholics all back him, or the great majority in Germany. And of course that gave prestige and everything else, and led to World War II as well. But a resurrection such as this we haven't seen since the Middle Ages, where the papacy and the state religion are guiding, and they are killing people who don't go along with them, or go along with the Church. Remember what Hailey said? That it was 1400 years from the time of Constantine, that the Church and the state governed Europe, until they finally broke away with the Protestants and Henry VIII over there in England. So we see clearly then that the woman is a symbol of the false prophet and the religious system under them. Can everybody see that pretty clearly? Good. Okay, so now that we understand that this is the false prophet, what are the teachings of this false prophet that is symbolized by that chalice or the cup with all the abominations? Certainly, they're numerous, and I'm not going to cover all of them, but I want to cover seven of those abominations of teachings from the woman's cup to beware of, to be very conscious of it. And so we go to the first great heresy, the first of this polluted wine that people drank from, to follow the woman. And the first great heresy, I wonder how many would think, what is the first great heresy that's even found in the Bible?

It's turning the grace of God into license to sin. That's throughout all the epistles of the apostles. Warning, some have crept in already in the church in the first century, and they're turning the grace of God into license to sin. Notice in Jude verses three and four.

Jude verses three and four. It says, beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you, exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. So Jude had the plan to teach about the positive doctrines about salvation, but something happened. The church was under a siege. It was contaminated. The church now, they realize some of these leaders in the church are, as Christ mentioned them, they are wolves disguised as sheep. And so he says, I have to write to you to warn you about what's happening in the churches. Verse four, he says, for certain men have crept in unnoticed. So they all spoke the same things. Oh yeah, we follow the same doctrines of Christ and everything, but they had another agenda that was hidden, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation. So we're going to have not only the wheat, we're going to have the tares along with it. Not everybody's converted. Paul said they were false brethren he had to contend with. We have to contend with that too. Not just because people assent and go along with things doesn't mean their heart is truly in it, as it was mentioned in the first message. So he says, ungodly men who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. I'd like to read this from the easy reading version. It says, they have used the grace of our God in the wrong way to do sinful things. And this is what Paul had to deal with. Talks about it in 2nd Thessalonians 2, about the mystery of lawlessness that is creeping in in the church. 2nd Peter 2 verse 21. Let's read that. 2nd Peter chapter 2, which is the same thing that Jude was talking about. Peter was very concerned about this. Notice what it says in 2nd Peter chapter 2 in verse 21. It says, for it would have been better for them, these people that have crept in the church, not to have known the way of righteousness than having known it to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them. Talks about holy commandment. Another translation has it even clearer. The Bible in basic English says, for it would have been better for them to have had no knowledge of the way of righteousness than to go back again from the holy law which was given to them after having knowledge of it. The holy law. See, this is what people are turning away from because the law is holy, just, and good. And very few churches teach that. We know what sin is. According to the Bible definition, 1st John chapter 3 verse 4. 1st John chapter 3 and verse 4.

It says, whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, for sin is lawlessness. In the good news Bible of this verse, the version says, whoever sins is guilty of breaking God's law because sin is a breaking of the law. So you see, you have that definition. It's not what they teach you out there. They teach you, oh, this is what we teach and this is what our church teaches. See, it's all undefined. We have it very perfectly clear. God's law is holy and it is what we should follow. That's why we keep the Sabbath day, because it's part of God's law. I don't want to break God's law. Do you want to break God's law? Do you want somebody else to force you into breaking His law? You're going to go in and give in? Would you rather sin before God or face persecution and difficulties?

Now, how did this woman with this cup make people to drink of it and be able to do away with some of God's laws? Do away with some of God's commandments? It was very cleverly done. I certainly didn't know any of this. When I was a Catholic, until I came into the church at 17 and my eyes were opened at that time by God, I could understand scripture. So, one way is doing away with many of God's commandments or hiding them from the people.

The Catholic Church did this with the second commandment, where it talks about, you shall not make images of anything in heaven or here on earth. You shall not bow to them. In other words, God wanted to ban religious images to use them for worship purposes. Dave Hunt, in his book, The Woman Rides the Beast, he explains, The ten commandments shown in Catholic catechisms leave out the second commandment, prohibiting images and divide the last one, that's the tenth commandment, the one prohibiting covetousness, into two commandments. See, they get rid of the second. Oops, but now you got nine. What am I doing? Oh, let's divide the tenth into two parts. Now we got ten again. Isn't that clever? You never have to talk about images or not bowing down to them.

It is a flagrant rejection of the clear command by God. Moreover, that rejection is dishonestly covered up by pretending the second commandment doesn't exist. It is a deliberate deception practiced upon the members of the church, most of whom know nothing about the Bible except what the clergy tell them.

It is a way to turn grace into license to sin. So people have it all over their lives. I always tell that story when I was a Catholic, as a young boy. One of the few things that we took with us when we had to flee from Cuba and Fidel Castro's communist system, which we were under for a year, one of the things I had was a silver cross, and I had it in my room. One of the few things that we brought from all the stuff that we had back in Havana, Cuba. And I remember reading the booklet, The Ten Commandments, and I got to the second one, and I thought, I never got taught this. I've got an idol in my room, and I got that idol, and I opened up the window, and we had a forest in the back, and I threw it as far as I could. Forgive me, God. I didn't know any better, but now I do. There's no excuse for it.

I don't know about you, but do you like to be deceived? Do you like to be lied to? Boy, I tell you, that's one of the things that really hurts a person most when you're lied to. And we go through life, and you trust maybe a church, you trust a person, like, you know, a company, or a friend, or whoever, and then they betray you, and it hurts ten times worse than some stranger who you don't know about.

That's why we have the love of the truth and the hate for the lie, but not for the person, because they don't know any better in most cases.

So we have this system now that with the commandment, the second commandment, out of the way, what can they do? They can have religious images, dress them up, have gold and silver and pearls, on these statues everywhere. You know, it makes people look, oh, look how rich the church is. Oh, look how they venerate all of these saints.

And they can have indulgences, which is the way that with a piece of paper signed by the Pope, if you pay enough, you can get your parents out of purgatory, you know, what Catholics believed, and that the more you paid, the less they're burning there in hell. And that was one of the main sources of income during the Middle Ages, when the Protestant Reformation took place, and they talked about these indulgences, and that was one of the big things that Luther was attacking, because they had all of these men that would go through, most of them were priests, and their assignment was to sell these papal indulgences, and so they had the famous, his name was Tesla, who said, as soon as a gold coin falls into the box, a parent or someone springs from purgatory. You see, the Pope had the power to remove people and to forgive sins. Well, this went on for hundreds of years, and that helped build this St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome, in great part, and then they had about a hundred years worth of wars after the time of Luther, and finally, Europe was divided into the northern area, was basically Protestant, and the southern area remained Catholic, but after that, the papacy was more careful. So they still sell indulgences, and they give you, if you have a certain thing that you give to the church and everything, they still can hand it to you, but it's more private. They don't go out there and sell their wares quite as openly. They have what is called the scapula, the scapular, which was this little woolen cloth that had been blessed by a priest, and you're supposed to wear it, and on it it says that nobody that wears this when they die will go to hell. So this is the guarantee of it. Somebody mentioned that they wore this scapular last week. Do you remember who mentioned this at all? But I was talking to him, oh, okay. It was Gloria who mentioned that, and finally, the thing just kind of just rotted, but you just venerated so much, and you look it up and you can buy those. You know, the church still makes money on all of this.

Now, God is very serious about keeping his Ten Commandments. They're the backbone of the Old and the New Testament, along with the grace that goes with the forgiveness and love that God has, but if it was just the grace and forgiveness and no backbone, it's like having no traffic lights. And then what is the judge going to do if you have a huge wreck? Because everybody ran into each other. You need to have traffic laws, and you're going to have fees. You're going to have to pay a penalty for it. It's the same way. You can't throw out the laws and then just have this freewheeling license. It causes chaos, and of course, the churches then build their own system, right, of laws. The Catholic Church has what's called canon law, which is based on all the traditions, and that's what you keep. But notice what God's true church, that woman that spiritually is a virgin in Revelation 12, what does she do? Is she turning the grace of God into license to sin? Nope. It says in Revelation 12 verse 17. This is talking about the end time period, and the dragon was enraged with a woman, and he went off to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. Yes, the testimony, these are the ones that are keeping God's laws in the proper way. They have the grace of God. They're following my instructions. In Revelation 14 verse 12, it is right across here. It says, here is the patience, which means endurance of the saints. Here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. It's very clear that the true church is not going to compromise the commandments of God. As soon as the church starts compromising and breaking the commandments of God, it begins to lose its name. And we better go someplace where there are keeping it, because God's going to hold us accountable for how we keep his laws. Sin is the breaking of God's laws, not man's laws or man-made laws. Okay, so the second thing in this cup that is an abomination is they hid not only the second commandment, they hid the fourth commandment as well, and the feasts of God. That was another thing that the church, the Roman church, could not stand to have. And so they changed the seventh-day Sabbath to the first-day Sunday worship and added the pagan feast days, which people are merely going along with.

These are pagan origin feasts. Their origins are all pagan. They tried to Christianize them, but like we say, you can take a cow, you can paint it like a horse, call it a horse. Is it a horse? No, it's still a cow. You can't just put makeup and try to put something and no longer is it paganized because it's sanitized. You know, before Christmas was for the Roman Saturnalia.

It was dedicated to the God Saturn, which was the God Zeus in the Greeks. This was the merriment that took place there December 24th. And then the 25th, the little child will come out, and there's new years coming out. It's starting now, the days to get longer. And so you can't change that. That's not Christian. It's one of these abominations. You think Christ is happy with somebody substituting for his birth the pagan God Saturn? And so another commandment is broken. And you know how they call it? If you look up what is the third commandment? Because they got rid of the second commandment.

So then they have the third, the second commandment for them is, you shall not take the name of God in vain. They completely remove one of the images, not bowing down to them. And then the third commandment, this is what they say, remember to keep holy the Lord's day. Isn't that cute? They removed completely the day called the Sabbath, and now it's the Lord's day. And that is a deceit. It's completely unbiblical. And so let's go to the third of these abominations, and that is the immortality of the soul. That is a pagan Greek and Egyptian and Babylonian concept. And it doesn't deal with a real resurrection from the dead.

The Bible constantly tells us that when a person dies, they fall asleep. They will be awakened when Christ comes back. Or if they were not called, a thousand years later they will be woken up in what is called the second resurrection, where they come to life again. But then all of those deceits are going to be removed. They're going to be taught God's way.

They'll have a chance. My dad, who passed away 25 years ago, I look forward to seeing him one day during the second resurrection, because he knew what the Roman church had done when he was a young boy. He went to these Catholic schools, and he said, what I saw there turned me off to the church.

That's why I don't attend church. But he still called himself a Catholic. But all of these abuses, how many people have been turned off by religion because of what's been going on there for centuries? So this has opened up the door to many other heresies, like the idea of when you die, you're going to be judged, whatever your state is, and you have to either go to heaven, hell, or purgatory. Instant judgment. Now, that's not the case at all. People have been anguished time and time again. What happened to this person that just died in an accident or a young man, somebody who didn't even get a chance at life, and they have to be judged immediately?

How about people in India or Africa when they die? Where do they go? Are they judged because of their ignorance and thrown into a hell fire? That's what's taught in these churches. The fourth of these abominations is infant baptism. So in the Catholic Church and many others, Lutheran Church and many others, evangelical churches too, that you're 10, 12 years old, and they just want you to get baptized right away because that way they can grow the church without a person having been mature enough to know what sin is, to have repented, to make a commitment that is going to be emotionally and mentally mature.

Not somebody that out of an emotional pleading does it in this way. Infant baptism is not a way to be able to be done by the Muslims. That's why they multiply so much. You have no choice. I know as a Catholic, I was baptized on the eighth day. Not baptized. Well, yeah, sprinkled, but they put me in the church roles as a little infant. I had no idea what I had chosen. The church had chosen for me, and that's why it's grown to 1.3 billion people today.

Now, I don't mean to say that everybody that's in the church went through infant baptism, but the great majority have. So it opened the door to the lack of repentance.

You no longer need that. Rather, you just need to confess to the priest, because they have the powers to forgive sin. It's called absolution, and they have the power to require penance of you. They'll say, well, say 10 Hail Marys and a couple of our fathers and do this or that. When we, Cady and I lived in Columbia, we lived there almost two years. I remember the story they told us that this whole area that has coffee plants, Colombian coffee is very good. One of the people that was in the church member, and they asked him, well, how did we get so many coffee plants? He said, well, we had a priest that for confession, it wasn't just to say, Hail Marys, you planted a coffee plant. And look what the plants look like now. So at least that was a penance that had some benefit as far as growing coffee, but that's not what God had in mind. So penance, which means works, and the rest of the seven sacraments. The fifth of these abominations is the papacy as a doctrine. This whole idea that the Pope is a successor of Peter and that he's got the keys to the kingdom and that he is the final appeal. You know, once the Pope decides something, then no appeal. Then no appeal. That's the last word on things. Well, Peter was never a Pope. He was never a bishop of Rome, from what we know from history. He probably died in Rome, but he was captured, taken, and executed. Not exactly like, oh yeah, he lived here and he was a bishop. Now, Paul died in Rome from what we see as well, from history, and some of it has to do with the Bible, the last part of the book of Acts. Henry Hailey, in his book, Hailey's Bible Handbook, says the following. The word Pope means Papa or Father. So, when you say Pope, you're actually saying, this is my spiritual father. This is my religious head. What does Matthew 23 verse 9, Matthew 23 verse 9, talking about Jesus Christ here, talking about religious titles. I'm going to read it from the amplified Bible version. It says, do not call anyone on earth, and then under brackets, who guides you spiritually, because it's talking about religious titles, your father. Do not call anyone on earth who guides you spiritually, your father, for one is your father. He who is in heaven, even that term, the Pope, named as the father of the Catholic Church, is an abomination to God. You look at the time here. It's 340. Am I past the hour? Yes, yes. Sorry, they didn't change daylight, day in the sailing time. I blame it on it. So, we're going to cut it short here, because of all the information that we have with this. We'll continue with the papacy as a doctrine, and why it's an abomination to God. So, with that, we'll finish, and then God willing, next week we'll continue.