The Catholic Church illustrates her continuing fulfillment of the prophecies of Daniel 7 and 8 concerning the fourth kingdom of Rome. In these chapters, the little horn is identified as a secular and religious power engaged in pompous, blasphemous, and persecuting actions from the time of Christ until the very end of time. Only Rome qualifies as the little horn power.
Pagan Rome persecuted the followers of Jesus in the early centuries, and Papal Rome (the papacy) continued and expanded that persecution during the Middle Ages. The pompous and blasphemous behavior of the papacy continued over many centuries until the present time. The Church wields “divine” authority; that is, presumed authority over the determination of what should be called good and what should be called evil, what should be worshiped and venerated, and what should not.
The Church is unwilling to let God’s Word determine the object of worship–that is, God alone, the God of Israel, the Father of Jesus Christ. Through fine distinctions that make no practical sense to most people, the Church attempts to separate the worship of God from the “veneration” of the saints and Mary.
The Church is not afraid to proclaim the veneration of lesser holy figures, as determined by Tradition. This action is the equivalent of a heaven in which God is worshiped and angels are venerated. Veneration is a form of worship, as any dictionary will show. No such veneration appears in the Bible.
In fact, when glorious angels have appeared to people in the Bible, the humans immediately fall on their faces in worship, only to be told instantly not to do so! These supernatural beings could easily gain the worship of humanity, but they refuse to.
But dead souls, such as saints and Mary, have no right to refuse the veneration heaped upon them. They must accept “worship” because the Church commands it. The results of centuries of such lordly usurpation of divine prerogatives are appalling.
The most common form of veneration in the Church is directed toward Mary, a biblical character as guilty of sin as Adam and as much in need of a Savior as Eve. The veneration of Mary, as a measure of time spent by faithful Catholics, is unknown. But observation alone indicates that the Church and its followers spend a great deal of time on Mary. Time with Mary is not time with Jesus. If Jesus is the Sun and Mary is the Moon, then it is true that, for much of the time in Catholicism, the Sun is being eclipsed by the Moon.
Over the centuries, the cult of Mary has expanded into various versions of Mary. The Church claims that the New Testament period valued Mary in a special way, although the language used by the angel Gabriel and Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist reflects what the prophetess Deborah said to Jael, the woman who killed the pagan king, Sisera. Deborah said, “Most blessed among women is Jael” (Judges 5:24).
Gabriel in the book of Luke indeed calls Mary “blessed among women,” but such language is not unprecedented. And after greeting Mary and praising her for having found favor with God, Gabriel goes on to focus on Jesus and His greatness, not Mary’s. Gabriel says of Jesus, “He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His Father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.”
At no point in Scripture do we hear Gabriel or anyone else call Mary the Mother of God, or Queen of Heaven, or Our Lady. She was never even The Virgin Mary. She was called Mary, the mother of Jesus.
The Church has multiplied the opportunities of her adherents to venerate Mary. This is accomplished first by the appearance of apparitions of Mary. The Church takes upon herself the authority to distinguish true apparitions from false. Once authorized, Catholics are allowed to benefit officially from the veneration of, say, Our Lady of Guadalupe (1531), Our Lady of Lourdes (1858), and Our Lady of Fatima (1917).
To gain from these venerations, followers must make pilgrimages to a particular spot on the globe. No doubt, the Church gains from the expense of these pilgrimages. Observers must wonder why an apparition is wedded to one physical location.
It took centuries for the veneration of Mary to become firmly entrenched in the liturgy of the Church. No record of the veneration of Mary occurs in the first century of Christianity. The first known prayer to Mary occurred in 250 A.D. At the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D., Mary was given the title of Theotokos, or God-bearer.
After this, the veneration of Mary grew exponentially, along with the creation of feast days and Marian doctrines. The Rosary became, and still is, a highly popular devotion to Mary. Eventually, in our era, the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption were instituted (1854 and 1950).
Mary, not Jesus, has become the gentle, motherly bosom to which a fearful Catholic flees. Jesus is too perfect, too good, to be of much comfort. It is always the mother who continues to believe in the value and worth of her offspring, no matter how evil and disgusting that offspring has become. So it is with Mary, the so-called Mother of God.
The Bible foretells a time in our near future when the deceptive system known as Roman Catholicism will dominate the world and cause all to worship her image and receive her mark. Jesus warns, “Come out of her, my people” (Rev. 18:4). The veneration of Mary will in no way aid the sinner. Jesus alone is the “way, the truth, and the life.”