So Exodus chapter number 20, verse number 1. It says, And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them. For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of thy fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. All right, let us pray. But we thank you and praise you, God, for all that you do. Thank you, Lord, for your blessings, your goodness today. I thank you, Lord, for this opportunity to be in your house. I pray that, God, you speak to us through this message. I pray, God, you'd help to encourage and strengthen your people. Lord, we thank you for all this, and we ask it in your son Jesus' name. Amen. Now, the question of does the Catholic Church commit idolatry, let me look at some of their stuff to try to answer that question for you. If you were to go to catholic.com or any of those, because they have sites like that, that are relatively official sites that answer questions, they have catholicanswers.org, all kinds of stuff like that available, so it's pretty easy to find out what they say they believe on things, that if you were to ask what the definition of idolatry is according to them, It's interesting that the definitions I read on most of those sites mention the worship of graven images, the worship of ideas, the worship of money, the worship of things, animals. It's like they hit everything but people. And so it's amazing to me that the definition has just about every other word that you and I would also agree that that can be an idol in your life, but people are somehow notoriously missing from most of the definitions I found that you can't commit idolatry if you worship people, it seems like. But no, the reason I say that is because When you look at Catholicism, sometimes you can see that they know that they're doing something they shouldn't be, and they cover it up. And this is why, if anybody who knows already knows why I started this passage, that's why I started here to answer the question. Because most of us who are outsiders and never been a part of it, we know that the Catholic Church has things that certainly look like idols. They have big statues that people kiss them, they pray to them, they bow down to them, they do all that kind of stuff. But the Catholic Church, of course, defends that it's not idolatry. And I'll give you some verses and things that they use for reference to say that it's not. And I'll show you their argument and show you what's wrong with their argument. The biggest telling sign in all of Catholicism that they are for sure committing idolatry is the fact that they felt the need to take that commandment out of the Ten Commandments. You and I just read the first part of the Ten Commandments. We didn't go very far into it, but we just read the first couple there. And when reading, we see that the commandments say that Let's start from the beginning. And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. So if you were a Catholic, your Ten Commandments jumps from there to not taking the Lord's name in vain. Everything else we're getting ready to read does not exist within your Ten Commandments. if you follow the Catholic Church and what they teach the Ten Commandments are. So verse four, thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them, for I am the Lord thy God, and I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. So you'd be fair to ask the question at that point, then, well, if they skip that whole section about not making a graven image and just cut it out and throw it away, what do they replace it with? Because the Catholic Church has Ten Commandments. I mean, you can find them if you go to the cathedrals here. Some of them have them posted up inside. They have big, ornate versions of them carved in stone, set in the buildings. What did they replace that with? Well, what they did is they went to the 10th commandment, which is to not covet your neighbor's wife, or his house, or his ass, or his donkey, or any of that kind of stuff, and said, there are two different commandments now. And so I'll show you what I mean in verse 17. It says, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's. So that's clearly one commandment. Like anybody reading that sees that that's one straightforward commandment, that covetousness is sin. That you're not to covet anything that your neighbor has, and the clear thing that commands that is the end of the verse where it says, nor anything that is your neighbor's, nor anything that is his. So it's clearly teaching you that this is one commandment. Because otherwise, you get in trouble when you adjust it and change it as the way it's presented in most Catholic churches and places of that nature, where it says not to covet your neighbor's wife and not to covet your neighbor's house, as you can then covet his car, you can covet his job, you can covet his possessions, you can covet his money, just not his wife or his house. Because covetousness is only a sin in those two respects when you split it and make it two different commandments and cut out the rest of it and throw it away. So what they have done is they've now made idolatry not a sin, I mean in terms of the Ten Commandments. It's no longer a sin because they cut it out of the Ten Commandments, threw that part away. And then they made it so that covetousness in general is not a sin, it's only when you covet specific things. Because when you have one commandment that is dedicated to not coveting his wife, and a separate commandment dedicated to not coveting his house, that means those two things are wrong, but everything else is on the table still. Everything else is acceptable. You can still covet the rest of it. So what I'm saying to you is when somebody goes out of their way to change the Bible to take something out is central and simple to understand is not to make any graven images. You know there's a reason for that. There's a reason why they chose to hide that part of the Bible from people, especially when it comes to something like the Ten Commandments, where you know they're going to take and print those out and stick them on the wall. They're going to engrave them in stone. They're going to hang them all throughout the buildings. Well, you can't have a building full of statues and then a commandment that says not to make any graven image, not to bow down to them, not to serve them, not to do any of these kind of things. You have to change something somewhere. So either you have to get rid of all these statues that populate your building and all these paintings and all these kind of things that you have hanging around, or you have to get rid of what the Bible says against that. And so the greatest answer to the question of does Catholicism commit idolatry is, if not, why do they have to take that out of the Bible? If not, why did they have to take that out of the Ten Commandments? If not, why did you have to change the Word of God to get rid of the part that tells you not to commit idolatry? Not to carve graven images and all these kind of things. Why did you have to knowingly and intentionally change the Bible if you're not committing idolatry? So the answer there is actually quite simple in regards to, do they commit it? Yes, of course they do. Now, the defenses they'll give you is they'll say, well, we bow down to the statues, but we don't worship the statues. And so they divide those as two separate things. And that's what I find. Many sites that I've read, many churches I've looked at, what they teach about this in Catholicism, they'll admit, yes, we bow down to the statues, because you'd be a liar. You'd be a fool if you said they didn't. I mean, people literally get down on their hands and knees and crawl across an entire city to kiss the feet of a statue. I mean, you can't tell me they don't bow down to them. They not only bow down to them, they crawl on their knees until they bleed to get to them. You can't tell me that they don't go and kiss them. I mean, there's a stone in Ireland that everybody goes to kiss it because they think somehow that's going to honor God in some way. You can't tell me they don't do all these kind of things. They do it across the world. I mean, you have people lined up here in Belgium every day outside of cathedrals to see one of the many pieces of the cross that somebody claims they have found. to see all these kind of artifacts and relics that they have set up. Every day if you were to go into Ghent and you would stand inside St. Nicholas, St. Bob's Cathedral, St. Michel's Cathedral, any of those, St. Jacobs, any of that. If you were to go stand in any of those places and watch all the tourists come through, you'll see them come, they pay their money, they get their candle, they burn it next to them. Wherever they're supposed to, they'll walk through and you'll see the statues where they're rubbed bare in certain places where people touch them and pray at that particular spot. You'll see the places on the ground where there's grooves who are into the floors in front of these statues where people go and kneel and pray before them day in and day out for hundreds of years now. So you'd be a liar if you said they didn't do it because it's all over the world. It's very visible and easy to see. You could do a Google image search and find countless pictures of people doing it. So they don't lie, at least, and they don't pretend that they don't bow down to the statues. They just try to say that, well, it's okay because we don't specifically worship the statues. Now, the argument they would give you is that anybody who knows their Bible would know that bowing down to something in worship or anything like that and some kind of adoration is condemned. Now, you would have something that, like, for example, you'd have an exception in the case of where there's a couple times in the Bible you see somebody come and they bow down before a king and do obeisance and then bring whatever their cause is and talk to that king. In fact, you have Bathsheba doing that before David, even though he was her husband. You have Esther doing that before Heshuaerus, even though he was her husband. And so you have a few verses where it says that, that she came and she bowed and she did obeisance before him, and then he asked her, what do you want? And she presented her need. Now, that's not a matter of doctrine, that's a matter of the formalities of any kingdom wherein if you go before the king, they expect you to bow in respect of the king. Now, I'm not going to tell you whether that's right or wrong to do that because that's a separate issue. It's not about bowing down to a statue. It's not a religious act of devotion. It's if you want to go talk to the king and you don't want your head to be cut off, you bow down before you get there. So that's a whole different subject than what we're talking about here. In fact, you'll see that somebody might, for example, have bowed down to Nebuchadnezzar, who would not have bowed down to his statue when he commanded everybody to bow down and worship it. Those were two different things. To bow down in respect of someone who is in a position of authority and to bow down in front of a graven image are two very, very different things. But in terms of how the Bible condemns this, let me give you a passage that I think is abundantly clear, one that even the Catholic Church admits is very clear about this, and that is Revelation 22, verse 8. Revelation chapter 22 and verse number 8 says, And I, John, saw these things and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel, which showed me these things. Then he saith unto me, See thou, do it not. For I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book. Worship God. So you have a situation wherein somebody comes to an actual angel, not a carving of an angel, not an engraving, but an actual angel who has come to him and delivered a message from God, and John in that moment is so overwhelmed that he falls down before the feet of this angel and begins to worship him, and the angel says, you better get up quick. I'm a fellow servant. I'm a fellow servant amongst you and your brother and the prophets. I'm a servant just like the rest of you guys. You've got no business worshiping me. Do what the Bible says and worship God. It's a very simple thing. When he fell down before the angel, he said that is an act of worship when you do it like that. So again, when I'm talking about you falling down before a king to keep your head from getting cut off, as far as I know, the Catholic Church will not cut your head off if you don't bow down to the statue of Mary here. Historically, they have done some pretty bad stuff to people who didn't kiss the statues of Mary and bow down to her and all this kind of stuff. But right now, living in Belgium, as far as I'm aware, you can walk in any cathedral you want. You can walk by every statue. I've walked by most of them here in the city. Not necessarily by my choice, more so people wanting to go see them. when I was playing tour guide, but I've walked by plenty of them, and so far I've yet to be forced to bow down and show obeisance to any of these things. I've been yet to be forcibly put on my knees and told, if you don't bow down to this statue, we're going to cut your head off or something. So it's not quite the same as when you go in the presence of a king or someone of great authority. It's a willful choice to subject yourself to this. What is worship? Worship is you bowing down before someone to show that they are worthy. It's you not just bowing down, there's plenty of ways you can do it, but worship is you showing the worth of someone. It's you showing that they are worthy to you. And one of the ways or acts in which you do that is taking the same act of respect that you might show to a king or someone else and giving it to that person who is worthy of worship. So when you go and you bow down to a statue, you can't tell me that you're doing that out of respect for a king or something else. You're doing it out of respect for some religious idea that you have attached to that statue. Oh, that's an image of the mother Mary. So we have to bow down because we respect Mary. But Mary's not a king who's forcing you to get on your hands and knees before her if you don't want to have your head cut off. Mary is like what this angel would say, a fellow servant, get up and worship God. Anybody who is a servant of God would say, get up and worship God. Nobody's going to ask you to come and bow down before them and worship them. Again, kings are different, but we're talking about anybody else. Nobody's going to ask you to bow down and show obeisance to them. So their argument as to why, well, we know Revelations specifically condemns this idea of bowing down before someone other than God. Well, it's okay, because they claim Joshua bowed down before an angel in Joshua chapter 5, verse number 14, when the captain of the Lord's host comes before him. But you understand, if you go read that passage, Joshua 5.14, you'll figure out real quick, the captain of the Lord's host is not an angel, it's Jesus Christ himself, pre-incarnate, appearing there before his birth in Bethlehem, appearing before Joshua. It's him revealing himself to Joshua, it's sort of his burning bush moment. That's why he even echoes the words, take off your shoes from off thy feet, for where thou standest is holy ground. If this was an angel, he didn't need to say that. That's something that was said to Moses to note to him that he wasn't standing before an angel, he was standing in the presence of God Almighty when he stood before that burning bush. So when the captain of the Lord's host also tells Joshua, take off your shoes because you're standing on holy ground, this is his burning bush moment. But instead of coming to him with the miraculous burning bush, he's coming to him as a soldier because Joshua has been a soldier all his life. God is meeting with him on terms that he would understand, and he is talking to him in a way that he would also understand that this is not an angel in front of you, this is God himself. So this is not an example of somebody being allowed to bow down and worship an angel. This is somebody being told not to do that in Revelation and someone being allowed to bow down and worship Jesus Christ in Joshua. In fact, you could also add to it in Judges when the parents of Samson want to worship the angel and he declines, he rejects that, points them to God as well. There's multiple examples of that kind of stuff happening in the Bible where men are not allowed to bow down to statues, to angels, to anything else, they're allowed to bow down and worship God. him and him alone. So those are the kind of arguments that you would find within the Catholic Church. One of the ones I actually laughed at it is 2 Kings 4 verse 36 and 37 where it's talking about the widow coming to Elisha after her son was dead. So her son was dead, he was laid at the feet of Elisha, Elisha brought him back to life, and it says she comes and she bowed down at his feet and took up her son and took him away. That bowing down at his feet was not the idea of her bowing down to worship Elisha. The bowing down is because her son's laying down on the ground. So she kneeled down to pick up her son, who has been brought back to life, and carry him away. Like, anybody with eyeballs can see it's not talking about an act of worship. She bent down to pick her son up, is what it's saying to you. But it's a foolish thing that when you don't believe the Bible, and you have your traditions, and you have to try desperately to defend them, that you will try to put them in the Bible where they don't fit. You will take Jesus out of the story there with Joshua and make it an angel because it's easier for you to believe that Joshua was told to take off your shoes for you stand on holy ground in the presence of an angel than to believe that your doctrine of worshipping statues and everything else is wrong. So in regards to the Catholic Church and their bowing down to statues, their praying to them in the name of the saints and everything else, you have to understand that none of that's of God. So let me put it to you maybe some terms that I would like for you to understand. The Catholic Church has their system of what they call patron saints. So it's not just that you have the statues inside the building, which I will say this, the statues inside the building are graphic and vile enough to turn you away from Catholicism if you weren't a Catholic anyways. When you walk into the Catholic Church and you find a big statue of a planet with a large serpent going around it, eating his own tail, just know that they may claim that that's supposed to be Satan as the god of this world, or however they want to pretend that he is. That's Norse mythology. That's Jormungandr, the world serpent, going around the planet and eating his tail. The reason I know that It's because I wasn't raised as a Catholic. I was raised as somebody who very much enjoyed learning about ancient religions, and that is a very, very big image within Norse mythology, and has still been to this day, so that anybody who plays video games or watches TV also would probably know that, because it gets incorporated a lot. So understand this, that when you go in there and you see stuff like that, it's very clear to anybody with eyes that this has nothing to do with God. This is the adaptation of paganism and bringing it into the church and claiming that it's worship of God. Why else would you use the exact same image? I mean, the exact perfect picture of what the pagans used to worship their gods, unless that was the intention. In fact, one of the things, it's a little bit harder to maybe prove in some ways, but one of the things that I think becomes clear when you start doing this research into it, is when you start looking at these statues of this is the image we decided this is what Peter looks like, this is what Paul looks like, this is what John and James and everybody else looks like, and you start comparing those to the Roman and Greek gods, you'll notice a lot of similarities between them, so that even in many paintings, like I was looking at a painting today, a famous one, where you have Paul there at the moment where they confused him for Zeus, and you know, he's there, and he's, I'm sorry, he confused him for Mercury, and he's there, and he's preaching, and he has Barnabas there with him, and Barnabas is quiet, so they think, oh, this must be the king of the gods, and Paul is Mercury. That's the story there from Acts, if you don't know it. I saw a famous painting of that, and in the painting, You have Barnabas standing there, and behind him is a statue of Zeus, and they literally have the exact same face on them. They're identical, the faces. Now, whether the artist did that to try to depict some idea of why the people would think he was Zeus, or whether he was trying to say something else is another question. But the point is, if you were to go look at him, you'll find that. And I'll give you a non-biblical reason. I mean, a reason why, like, maybe it's not as bad as I'm making it out to be. Something to defend them a little bit. If you look at Eastern Orthodox and their pictures of the saints, you'll notice that it has a very strong resemblance to the other art of that part of the world. They look like people from that part of the world and so forth. If you look at African Americans in the U.S. or, I'm sorry, I say that because you have to understand my country has programming. If you look at black people in the U.S., people who I I hope the Africans here will support me in saying this, have about as much right to call themselves Africans-Americans as I have the right to call myself a European-American because their ancestors have lived in America as long as mine have. So if you look at black people in the U.S., when you see the art that's from there, I don't know if you guys have this in Africa, I've never asked you about it, but there, Jesus and his disciples are almost always, like if you go, there's certain stores that cater to black religious people in the U.S., they're almost always drawn as being black, even though they're Jews. But if you look at Roman and European pictures of Jesus, he is blond-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned, thin-nosed, all this kind of stuff that looks nothing remotely Jewish at all. So I would offend them in this part, that there is a reason why it would make sense that their depiction of the apostles and their depiction of Jesus and all these people would not look anything like the Jews. is because throughout the world you see that, that people try to make the things of God look like them. They want to believe that, okay, the apostles look like me. They want to believe, okay, he looked like a European and all these kind of things. And so there's a reason for it, why their statues would have some similarity to that of the Romans, because they were Romans. but at some point it starts to be a little bit too much when the face of this Roman god and the face of this apostle is identical. When they have the same beard, the same hair, everything else in common, at some point it starts to be a little bit more than just, you know, you have a similar carving style because that's just the carving style of your people. Now, that's a side note. But what I'm saying to you is this, that so much of the reason why idolatry has been adopted into the Catholic Church is because of the fact that the Catholic Church, wherever they have went throughout history, have picked up the habits and the things of the pagans, and they do carry them over. Now, there is a line between some arguments that get taught, for example, people who are against Christmas because they say it's entirely pagan, that would be false. The name Christ Mass, of course, actually is something from the Catholic Church, and there are many traditions within Christmas that come from paganism. But when it comes to the very idea of celebrating the birth of Christ, that was done before the Catholic Church ever existed, or they had the chance to adapt any pagan holidays. However, there are many, many holidays within Catholicism that are entirely them taking a local celebration of the pagan believers and adapting it verbatim, exactly as it is. In fact, this is one reason I get ready to go into this idea of the patron saints and this kind of stuff, is many of the saints within the Catholic Church, which we'll talk more about what that word actually means probably next week, but many of the saints within the Catholic Church are pagan gods that were just adapted and taken over, or even people from other religions entirely. Like, one that may surprise you if you don't know it is St. Patrick had nothing to do with the Catholic Church. Like, he's the patron saint of an entire country, but he was not a Catholic. In fact, his doctrine was much closer to that of ours. I mean, he wasn't a Baptist either, but he believed much more like us than he did them. He had nothing to do with them. But they just adapted him and said, hey, we need somebody to get all these Irish people to follow us, so let's take one of their folk heroes, one of their people, and we'll lift him up. He was one of the best Catholics to ever come to Ireland. And that's what they're good at. In fact, what they do is essentially the same thing that the Mormons and all the others do. Mormons, when they want to convince people to follow their religion, is they come in and say that we are the real church, we're the church started by the apostles, everybody else went wrong, and we're here to correct it. The Jehovah's Witnesses say the same thing. Seventh-day Adventists say the same thing. The Muslims say the same thing, just in a slightly different wording. The Catholic Church says the same thing. They say, well, we didn't exist until a few hundred years after the Apostles, but we're the church started by the Apostles. Now, the church at Jerusalem, the churches of Galatia, the church at Philippi, all of them would beg to differ with you, but they were the church started by the Apostles, according to them. Even though pretty much everything they believed didn't exist within the church, in regards to their special doctrines, the ones that are unique to them, like the sacraments and the worship of Mary and all this kind of stuff. None of that was in Christianity before the Catholic Church got started, and most of it didn't exist in Catholicism until fairly recently in their history. The biggest difference between the Catholics, the Muslims, the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses, is that the Catholics are a lot older than them. They're old enough that most people don't know how to look back and realize that, okay, well, actually, this was just the first split from Christianity, the first cult to be split out of it and started. The biggest difference is they've been around long enough to conquer governments and create an empire and be one of the largest money-producing industries in the entire world, and so they have conquered and killed most of their enemies throughout history and helped plunge people through what is called the Dark Ages and cover up a lot of what they've done throughout time. So that's the only difference between them and the Mormons and everybody else like that. So now saying that, why do I bring up patron saints then? They can tell you they don't pray to the saints as in asking them to do stuff like you would a God. They can say, well, we asked them to talk to Jesus for us. We talked about this last week, that that's their claim. We asked them to talk to Jesus for us. So I went and I found a written out prayer that is given from one of the major Catholic websites of this is how you're supposed to pray to patron saints. And the prayer says this, O heavenly patron, whose name I have honor to bear, pray earnestly at all times to God for me. So, so far it sounds like they're being honest, that that's what they want. They want him to go talk to God for them. But, look at this, confirm me in faith. How is a dead saint in heaven going to confirm you in faith unless they have God-like supernatural power to do something here on the earth? Strengthen me in virtue. How are they going to do that without God-like supernatural power to do something here on the earth? Defend me in the battle of life. How are they going to defend you in the battle of life unless they have God-like supernatural power to do something here on the earth? So that conquering the enemy of my soul, I may deserve to be rewarded with everlasting glory. Amen. I mean, that's a prayer handwritten by prominent people within the Catholic Church and say, you go pray that to your patron saint and ask them to do these things for you. And most everything on that list has nothing to do with talking to God for you. Most everything on that list is, hey, reach down from heaven and beat my enemies for me. Hey, reach down from heaven and help me to live a decent and clean life. Hey, reach down from heaven and help me do these things. So they very much do pray to the patron saints. They sell little statues of the patron saints in many places. They believe if you take the statue of that patron saint and you set it beside the head of your child when they're sick, if you get the right one. If you get the wrong one, you might get something else. But if you get the right one and you put it next to your child, that that saint being there is going to bring them healing and help from God. I mean, that's the whole idea of patron saints, is these are saints for special occasions. That these are saints, you pray to them when you want help with this or that. And if you're not aware, there's more than a thousand of them. Or more than a thousand. things that they're attached to. And I have to correct that, because it's not necessarily that I say there's more than 1,000 patron saints. There's more than 1,000, according to catholic.com website, .org, I'm sorry. According to catholic.org website, there is more than 1,000 particular causes in which there is a patron saint attached to that. So what I mean is, for example, there is a patron saint of airline workers, but for most countries it's the same. There is one country though if I check real quick, I may can find it for you that there's different They get their own special one and they get married. So I guess they're better than the rest and that would be France. So Belgium Spain or Argentina, they all just get our Lady Loreto but when it comes to France they get married that's their patron saint for the airline workers and So my point is, like, you see that there may be more than a thousand categories, but sometimes it's Mary just over and over again. Sometimes it's somebody else just over and over again. So I'm not saying there's more than a thousand patron saints, but I am saying there's more than a thousand particular causes. In fact, Belgium has one patron saint, while Brussels has its own patron saint. And I didn't go through the cities of Belgium to check, but each of them may also have their own patron saints. In fact, let me just give you a few of them here on my list in front of me. The patron saint of abandoned children is either Ivo or Jerome. The patron saint of Abbeville, France is Wolfram. The patron saint of abdominal pains, if you have abdominal pain, this is the one if you get the statue and keep it close enough, it'll heal your stomach. So, Jonas, if you knew this when you had an ulcer, I could have told you to fix it, I just didn't know this myself. But it's Erasmus, so it's actually from here too, it's from the Netherlands. He didn't like the Catholic Church, he completely separated from them and all that kind of stuff, but he can still heal your belly though if you pray to him. The patron saint of Abingdon, England is Edmund Rich. The patron saint of protection against abortion. I mean, the only protection you need against abortion is don't get an abortion, but the patron saint of protecting you against abortions is Catherine of Sweden. So if you're not able to just not get an abortion, just don't go do that, then Catherine of Sweden can help you. The Patron Saint of the Abruzzi region of Italy is Gabriel. The Patron Saints of Abuse Victims is too far along of a list for me to read it all right now. The Patron Saint of Academies in the Roman Catholic Church is Thomas Aquinas. The Patron Saint of the Acadians and Cajuns is Our Lady of the Assumption. The Patron Saint of Accommodations is Gertrude of Nivelles. The patron saint of accountants. So Leah, you need to know this. You need to know this, Daniel. We need to make sure we teach this to Rebecca since she's not here tonight. We need to make sure we talk to Ruben about this. But patron saint of accountants is Matthew. It makes sense, actually. I mean, he was the one that was a tax collector. I think they're two different jobs, but sure. The patron saint of people who've been accused falsely is Raymond Nonnatus. The patron saint of Achaia, the place in Greece where Corinth was, is Andrew the Apostle. The patron saint of actors. So if you're an actor and you need a saint just to help you be good at your job and take care of you, you have Genesis of actresses, because you need a different one for men and women, is Pelagia. The Patron Saint of Adopted Children, I've got about three or four of them here. The Patron Saint of Advertisers, and so I need this because we do a lot of advertising around here, so I definitely need this one, is Bernadine of Siena. The Patron Saint of Advocates is Ivo. The Patron Saint of Affianced Couples or Engaged People is Ambrose. So anybody, some engaged couples who need help with that, you have Ambrose. Here's for Africa. This is one that's interesting to me. For Central Africa, You have the most pure heart of Mary. I don't know what the difference between that and all the other forms of Mary are, but you have the most pure heart of Mary from Central Africa. I assume that would be you guys. For North Africa, you have Cyprian of Carthage, so nobody here has to worry about that one. For Southern Africa, the southern part of the continent, not the country, you have Mary on the Feast of Her Assumption. So I guess they get married part of the year, you get married the other part, I don't know. I'm not sure how that works. For the African Catholic Youth Action, you get Charles Luanga. For Protection Against the Mice, I have to pause on that one just to make sure you take that in for a second. The patron saint to protect your house against mice. So if you don't want mice in your house, you don't need cats, you don't need poison, you don't need mouse traps, just get the statue of Gertrude. I'm assuming Gertrude or it seems like there's also Servetus. Get one of those statues and put it in your house and the mice will not come anymore. If this is starting to sound like witchcraft if this is starting to sound like pagan idolatry, there's a good reason for that For the city of Ageron, Sicily, you have Philip of Ageron. For agricultural workers, farmers, and everybody else in that kind of field, you have Benedict. For people who give care or aid to take care of people with AIDS, you have Olesius Gonzaga. And you also have Olesius Gonzaga for people who have AIDS. So both causes, that's the one you need. And I stopped at A because it would have taken me 198 pages to have printed them all. And for sure we're not going to sit here and read a thousand different causes for which you can find your Greek god to come take care of you if you need it. Because if that sounds familiar to you, if it doesn't, it means you've never studied ancient religions. And so I don't blame you for that, you don't need to study it. But if you're somebody like me who loved that kind of stuff and studied it growing up, that should sound very familiar to you. Because the god of Sparta, Greece, was the god of war, and that's why the Greek Spartans specialized in war. The god of Athens was Athena, who's named after her. And she was the goddess of wisdom, and so the people in Athens specialized in wisdom and all of that. That's why Paul even criticized them and rebuked them for that when he stood on Mars Hill and preached to them. As you understand, every city in Greece had its patron god whom they would pray to to help them in that city for any special need they have. Every career in Greece had its patron god to whom they would pray to get help for whatever they were facing. Every cause in Greece. Oh, your crops are failing this year. Okay, go over here to... No, it wasn't Dionysus. Somebody else, I think. Maybe Dionysus. Go over here to this one and pray, and the patron god of crops will take care of you. You're having a hard time hunting. Artemis will help you with that. The storms keep messing up your boats. Well, that's just Zeus. You just go to him for that one. You're having a hard time this year because you're a soldier, and you're not doing so good at your training? Oh, go to Sparta. And I keep drawing a blank on his name. It's Mars in Roman mythology. I can't think of it in Greek. What is it? Go to Ares and he'll help you, or Ares, and he'll help you. So they give you these lists of, here's your patron god for this cause, this purpose, go to him whenever you want. They even have one for the parties of drinking and for wine, for sex and getting drunk and partying and all of that. That's Dionysus. And ironically, you find him in a lot of Catholicism and Catholic traditions and writings and all that kind of stuff being brought up and mentioned. Even in modern Christian things, such as stories like the Chronicles of Narnia and stuff. He's a main character in one of those books. And so you see that, like, the Greek gods never went away. The Roman Catholic Church took ideas from them and adapted it into Catholicism just like you do anywhere else. In fact, I had a list here, if I didn't just throw it away, of some of the ones where they have specifically taken pagan gods, just straightforward took those gods and made them into patron saints. One of those is St. Brigid of Ireland or Scotland, Celtics, Ireland or Scotland? Something that's Celtic, Irish or Scottish? Irish, right? Scottish, okay, I'm getting it backwards. Katrina will be very upset with me if she hears that, so no one will be able to hear that part of the message. No, so from Scotland, yes, Brigid, Brigid, however they pronounce it. If you take the story of the goddess that was there all along before the Catholics ever got there, and then you take the story of St. Brigid or Brigid or however you pronounce it, Same exact story, just one of them was Catholic and the other one was a god. If you take the story of St. Mercurius, you will find that it lines up pretty perfectly with the Greek god Hermes or the Roman god Mercury, the very one that Paul was mistaken for being, because he was the messenger of the gods and all that kind of stuff. Lines up pretty perfect with that. One of the craziest ones to me is you have Saint Josaphat, which, if you look at the story, it's just Buddha. It's the story of the first Buddha, the prince who went and explored the land. It's the story of him. And it even comes adapted from the same part of the world. It's a story that they heard and they said, oh, that man must have been a Catholic. And it's like, no, that was Buddha. That's the guy who started that religion that populates most of the orient of this world. It's not a Catholic. He has never been, nor will he ever be. One of the most obvious ones is Saint Guadalupe, who is adapted from the Greek goddess Tanatzen from Aztec mythology. Now, I could go on and on, but I just don't have time to go on and on in those things, nor do I have time to sit down and look at every patron saint and where they come from. But my point is that if you were to go through all of this, it just becomes more and more clear that this is just idolatry. This is just somebody who realized if I want the Romans to worship my God, we'll take the same system of worship they have, wherein you have patron gods you pray to for every cause. And we'll bring it in the church and let them do it. When we go to South America and we need them to worship our God, we'll just take their gods and say that they were actually secret Catholics all along that were living among you, and that you just thought they were gods, that they were better than you because they were Catholic, and so they're saints now. When we go to the East and we need to get over into China and all those kind of places over there, we'll just take men like Buddha and say, well, he was actually a Catholic, and that's why he was enlightened the way he was, is because he adapted Catholicism somewhere along the ways. and you just didn't understand that that's what was happening, and so you made a religion out of it. But he was actually a Catholic the whole time. When you need to go to North America and reach the Native Americans and all that, well, they didn't even bother with them. They just killed the ones that didn't listen. But the point is, when you go throughout the world and you look at all these different Saints of these people the ones who we know are real historical figures. They actually existed Yeah, sure We know them but all those ones who come from a time way back in history where we can't really figure Oh, yeah, they existed before the Catholic Church even existed We're not exactly sure when they lived all of those if you start looking at their origins You'll start finding real quick that they come from idolatry and from pagan religions. I The Catholic Church is not only an idolatrous religion, they are really just the continuation of so many pagan religions that have existed. And that's why God warns us. I have a lot of verses I wanted to get to about idolatry and show you this through the Bible more. I knew I'd get sidetracked some going through that list. I didn't really estimate properly how long it would take me. So let's go to 1 Corinthians 10, because I don't have time to go through most of my passages. Most of them are things you would know. Deuteronomy 4, 16 through 18 is another warning not to worship man or woman or creature or anything. I also want to note that to you that when he talks about not making graven images, when he says that are in heaven above, on the earth or in the sea, he's making sure you understand that he's telling you not to make graven images of anything in creation. There's nothing that you're allowed to make a graven image of and worship it. And so he mentions that in Deuteronomy 4, 16 through 18 in a very similar way. I'll throw out here as we're going to 1 Corinthians 10, also Isaiah 44, 9 through 20, you have a very, very good passage wherein it explains how that a man will go out into a forest and he'll cut down a tree and he'll take half of it to get it carved and overlaid in gold and have boards attached to the feet so it'll stand up in his house and he'll pray to it and think that it's going to help him. But the other half of that same tree, he uses it to burn and heat his house or cook his food and all this kind of stuff. And he gets to the point, he asks the question, how can someone be so blind that they can't see what I just said to you and understand how foolish that is, that this tree that could not defend itself this tree that was carved by the hands of a man, this tree that half of it went to cooking my food, that somehow once I carved it in the image of what I think Peter might have looked like, or some god, what I think it might have looked like, and then stand it up in my house and cover it in gold, now it suddenly has the power to answer your prayers and help heal your children and everything else. I mean, he's saying the reason why somebody could do that, he says, because their hearts are blinded. He says there's a blindness upon them that they cannot see the truth. And so if you want to know why people go to idolatry, it's because there's a blindness in the heart of man. But I want to go to first Corinthians 10, because I think it's a passage that will help you even more. Because 1 Corinthians 10 is written to believers, and it's a warning to believers, that idolatry is something that everybody has to be careful, because man is naturally inclined and drawn towards this kind of sin. So 1 Corinthians 10 6 says, Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them, as it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed and fell in one day three and twenty thousand. Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents. Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer. Now all these things happen unto them for in samples, and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the earth are come. Wherefore, let him that thinketh he standeth take heed, lest he fall. There hath no temptation taken you, but such is common to man. But God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you're able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry. So you think about this passage. We always and we talked about this a few months ago when we're talking about the brazen serpent. We always think about this passage as a warning against fornication, all these other kinds of sins that are mentioned here, against tempting God, against murmuring, against these things. But the emphasis, the first thing he's talking about is idolatry. The last thing he's talking about is idolatry. In the middle, he's talking about idolatry. The whole passage is laid over with idolatry. The last thing he says, like the thing he says, wherefore, meaning this is what everything you've learned up to this point has been building to. He says, wherefore, flee from idolatry, flee from idols. So when he says there's a temptation come on you that is common to man, idolatry is the chief thing to which he is pointing. Now you can say murmuring and all that other stuff is too, but the chief thing that the passage is pointing you to is idolatry. And God is warning you that it's natural for us as people to put an overly religious attachment to things. to take things that God never intended you to look at it and worship it as if it was God himself. He says that you're naturally inclined to do that. And one of the best examples of that is the brazen serpent. Something that the Bible intended to be a picture of Christ, but yet we find out in 2 Kings chapter 18 and verse 4 that by the time of And the king there, I'm drawing a blank on his name, but by the time they got to the king there, that he had to tear it down and destroy it. He had to take that Hezekiah, there we go. By the time we get to Hezekiah, he had to take the brazen serpent, tear it down, destroy it, break it into pieces, and do away with it. Something that God had ordained the construction of it. He told Moses to do it. The people began to burn incense to it and worship it, pray to it, treat it like a god. And so because they were treating it like a god and serving it like it was a god, Hezekiah said, this has to go. He said, it's just a piece of brass. That's what Nehushtan means. This is just a piece of brass, guys. This is not God. You're not supposed to worship this. And so what I'm telling you is, it's not wrong, for example, that you have a cross on your wall. But if you feel like you have to make a sign to it, and you have to give some kind of obeisance to it, and respect to it, and you have to honor it, and all this kind of stuff, and you need to bow down to it, you need to get rid of it. Now you got a crucifix wherein you're presenting and preaching the idea of a perpetually sacrificed savior like the Catholic Church teaches. Yeah, you need to get rid of that. But as far as a cross to remind you of his sacrifice, no problem. You can have it as long as you're not putting some kind of undue reverence or respect on it. Because guys, it's just a piece of wood. It's nothing special. It's just a piece of wood. I can tell you, Lori literally found the wood thrown away on the side of the road, brought it home. I cut it and put it together myself. It's not crafted by some special craftsman. It's not made from any special wood. It's the same cheap wood that you would buy to fix a floor in a house that you don't want to really take care of. You just want to get it ready to sell it and make it somebody else's problem. So you understand something that it's nice to have a building. But this building should not be worshipped, it should be respected because it belongs to God, but we shouldn't do some undue religious respect to it. You don't have to make a sign when you pass down the street and cross in front of it. You don't have to make some kind of show of obeisance and respect to it. You don't need to bow down when you walk in the door and make the sign of the cross, which I have seen people do many times going into churches who don't know any better. But you understand, none of that stuff is of God. God is supposed to be the object and the direction of all your worship. It is to go to God and to God alone. Your worship is not to be given to anyone or anything else. And He's warning you that, okay, maybe in your heart, that statue over there is not regarded as an idol. Maybe you don't see it that way. but that temptation is common to man. That temptation to start looking at that statue like it's a little bit more than just a statue. To see it as something more than just a piece of stone that somebody carved it. He said that temptation is common to man so that all throughout history men have fallen and had to be judged by God because of it. Don't even open the door, flee from that kind of idols. 1 John 5.21 says that, to keep yourself from idols. God warns us throughout the New Testament that, in fact, even when he's discussing idols, and he says that you and I know an idol is nothing. It's just a statue. It's just a piece of brass. It's just a piece of wood. It's just a piece of stone. We know that. And God still says we have to be very, very careful. He says, don't keep them in your house, don't have them, don't go to the places where they're being worshipped. He says, if a friend of you invites you to their house and you get there, you have to be careful to consider, like, what testimony am I giving if I'm going to sit down and eat something that's being offered to that statue over there? What testimony am I giving if I'm going to have some participation in all of this? Because while I know that's just a piece of stone, I also know that there's a devil behind that, that there's a devil teaching men to worship that piece of stone and offer up sacrifice and prayer and everything else to it. So the Catholic Church can tell you they don't practice idolatry, but if they didn't, why did they have to take that commandment out of the Bible? If they don't, then why do they have a patron saint for every cause that you can pray to them? You can go and buy the statue at the right store and set it up anywhere you want. And if anybody disagrees with me on that, they obviously don't live in Europe, or at least not this part of Europe. I won't speak to England. Anybody who would disagree with me on that statement is probably an American or somebody who's never been anywhere around Catholicism. Because that was one of the things that startled me the first time I come here. And you have entire stores dedicated to the selling of these statues. These little idols that if you buy the right one and you put it on your dash of your car, you'll have safety while you travel. You buy the right one and you put it here, apparently it'll protect you if you're an airline worker. This one will protect you if you're somebody flying on the airplane. Apparently, if you're from Africa, then you get married for one time of the year, and you get married for the other time. It's almost like action figures at this point. You have Mary for the assumption, so that must be one different statute than Mary at this other time. Otherwise, how do you distinguish which is which? And so, I mean, you understand, they're using the same marketing system that Hollywood uses to market their movies. It's like, well, if we change the superhero's costume, then we can sell new toys. So all the kids who bought toys the last time we made a movie We'll buy new toys when we put out the new movie because we changed this costume just a little bit, like we added a new splash of color in there. That's why they changed our costumes in every movie. So the reason why I guess you only get married for one time of the year and you get married for the other time of the year and they get married another time of the year is so that there's different costumes or whatever way they have of recognizing that, and you have to buy different statues so they can sell more product. I mean, you understand how foolish that is, like anybody who's not Catholic can look at that and realize like that's idolatry. That's foolish. Like that's that's not that's not from a God who says that he alone is God and not to make graven images. That's for men who want to sell you something. That's for men who want to take pagan religions and all these polytheistic religions, wherein they had patron gods for every subject and adapted into their religion and twist you into doing that. That's all that stuff is. But the thing is, it's common to man to be drawn to it. And so if they'll offer it to you, the evilness and the wickedness in the heart of men will be drawn to that in a way that they would never want to seek after God when you preach the Bible to them. The reason why the Catholic Church has had so much success in doing that exact thing is because your sinful nature wants exactly that kind of thing. Your sinful nature wants a statue to worship. Your sinful nature wants a physical material thing that you can hold on to it and treat it as your God, so that you can call on in your time of need, so you can come to it and pray to it, so that you can show your obeisance to it, all this kind of stuff, to hope that it will help you in some way. Your sinful nature wants that. And that's why he's warning against it in 1 Corinthians 10. He's telling you, this is a temptation that everybody is prone to face. Don't even open the door to it. And the Catholic Church knows that this is like selling drugs to a drug addict. It's no problem. You don't have to do any marketing. You just have to make it available. And so that's all they've ever had to do, is come to people who are prone to worship gods and idols and all this stuff, and say, hey guys, because we tell you it's not. But when you're praying to those patron saints and all those statues, or you're going inside the cathedral and you're worshiping all the statues and you're bowing before them and all this stuff, you are no different than the people bowing before the statues of Zeus and all these other gods that came before. You're no different than the people who believe that praying to the right goddess at the right time will help them with their crops this year. You're no different than the people sacrificing their children to Dagon and Moloch and all of these, thinking that it'll make sure that we have good weather this year. You understand that's why Baal was the god of weather? Is because they believed if they sacrificed their children to him, they would have good weather? Now you maybe can understand a little bit of why God took away the rain so many times from Israel when they worshipped Baal. Because he was showing them, you think you're going to worship the god of weather and it's going to give you good weather? Well, let me take the weather and take the rain away from you and see how that really works. So what I'm telling you is, worshipping these idols today is no different than them worshipping those idols before. The only difference is, The Catholic Church tells you it's not. That's it. I mean, there's no difference. You're doing the same thing. It's just they put Christian names on it. They claimed it's Peter and Paul and all these kind of people and told you it's not idolatry. But you can't find any difference between it and idolatry. Father, we thank you and praise you, God, for all that you do. Thank you, Lord, for your blessings, your goodness. Pray that your watch over us helps to serve you. Thank you, Lord, for all that you do tonight. Thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to be here. Just pray that you'd work in our hearts and help us, Lord, to see the importance, Lord, of getting anything that might be an idol out of our lives, Lord. We ask it all in your son, Jesus' name.