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It's Time to Change!

John Harrold

John Harrold

Introduction.

Chapter 1.The Early church.

Chapter 2. What changed in 313 A.D.

Chapter 3. The Church today.

Chapter 4. The future Church.

Chapter 5. Salvation or church rules.

Chapter 6.The Charismatic Church.

Chapter 7. Get right with God.

Chapter 8 Epilogue.

 

Introduction.

 

I started this article in September 2009 and for some unknown reason it got put aside and not completed until now.

It is now July 27th 2015 so six years have gone by and only now is the piece on its way to being completed.

In this article we will ask questions and look at what has changed over the years and what is to come for the future.The first part will be to see how the Early Church started and how it functioned. Then we will look at what changed the way that the church operated. This will be followed by the church today and that of the future.

 

The Bible verses that I will use are taken from the King James Bible, Authorised Version, as I believe that this is the best of the English Bibles ever produced.

 

We will be mainly  reading from the book of Acts where we will see the birth of the church just after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

 

One other thing before we go on and that is that you should be aware that sites used from the internet might not always be correct. Please check carefully for yourself and do not just rely on what I say or have written. I have tried my best to be accurate in the things that I mention in this work, but you need to check for yourself.

 

Chapter 1. The Early Church.

 

This chapter will look at the very beginnings of the Christian Church up to the year 313 A.D. when things changed dramatically.

To start with let's go to Acts chapter 2 verse2. Here we see where they first met. It was in people's houses. There were no church buildings at that time. The only other building that they went to was the Temple in Jerusalem for the feast days as mentioned in the five books of Moses. In the same chapter and verse 46 they are still going from house to house. (see also chapter 5 verse 42 and chapter 12 verse 12).

 

A new thing happened in chapter 10 verse 22, they were meeting in a gentiles house. This gentile was a Roman Centurion who we are told loved God and also loved the Jewish people and helped them in various ways. It says that he feared God as did all of his household. This is possibly the first gentile believer ever recorded in the Bible that loved Jesus.

 

Then we go on to chapter 16 verse 15 where a business woman who sold purple dye found the Lord.

 

This lady came from Thyatira, in modern Western Turkey. Her heart had been opened up by the Lord to receive all that Paul and his team told her about God and about Jesus etc. On receiving all of this, she and her household were baptised into their new found faith.

 

In the book of Romans chapter 16 verse 5, we read of a church group being in a the house of Aquilla and Priscilla.

 

There were still no Church buildings as such. There were no Cathedrals, there were no Abbeys, there were no Minsters. So why do we need these expensive buildings today? We do not need these places to worship the Lord God of Heaven. We do it from our hearts.

 

The Temple in Jerusalem was the place where they went at the feast times until that building was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 A.D. From that time there has been no sacrificial system for the Jewish people, nor will be until it is restored at a future date, when it will be taken over by the Devil himself.

 

During the first three centuries the believers grew in number which frightened the Roman Emperors so much that they started to persecute the believers. But the more that they did that, the more that the church grew.

 

The believers paid a high price for not bowing down to these rulers, who thought that they were God. The believers were following the Word of God which says that you do not worship anything in the shape of an animal, a person or anything in the natural world. You can do your own study about that.

 

These emperors could not stand the thought that there was another God, as they thought that they were God and not a mere mortal man. These believers had to go.

 

They were thrown to the Lions in the coliseum, used as human lamps by having oil poured over them and then tied to a pole and lit to provide the lights for the cruel games that were being held in the arenas. Others were crucified just like Jesus was, but they did not give in or give up their faith.

 

 These believers had given up Paganism to follow Jesus and it was a costly thing to do and it still is today in the year 2015.

 

Even with all of this torture the church grew and grew so much that these evil emperors could not control it. The early church was a living organism not and organisation. It was vibrant, lively and living. It was a new thing that God was doing at that time which would turn the whole world upside down. This new way of thinking challenged everything that was called religion. It wasn't an idol that was being worshipped, but the living God of the universe in the form of His son Jesus Christ. This is why the establishment of that time did not like it, because if Caesar was God then this new God was an imposter. So after a while this new religion had to be got rid of one way or another.

 

Persecution failed so another way had to be found to control or destroy this new faith.

 

Things started to be changed that came about in the fourth century A.D., which is the subject of the next chapter.

 

Chapter 2. What changed?

 

In the year 313 A.D. Constantine the Roman Emperor decided that he was going to make Christianity the state religion of the empire.

This decision was going to bring about great changes which are still with us today in the 21st Century.

 

The first change was that Christians were no longer permitted to meet in their homes they had to build what we now know as churches. From this point onwards we have Cathedrals, Minsters, Abbeys, etc. Which cost billions of £'s to build and to keep in a good state of preservation. That money could have been used to feed the poor and hungry of those days and if these buildings were sold today the same thing could still happen.

 

 

 

I like looking at the stained glass windows in churches as many of them tell a Biblical story and are richly decorated. But, at what cost?

 

The Book of the Acts mentions about meetings being held in homes at least seven times. This is something that you can look up for yourself. After the Norman conquest of Britain many such buildings were put up and these buildings superseded any that were built in Saxon times. Then the Victorians built loads of churches right round the nation, but now many of them are empty and sold off to become anything but a church building. This, to my mind shows the spiritual state of the nation today.

 

The next change was in the way that things were being done. The church became an organisation not a living organism.

Popery started at the same time, and there is no way ever, or at all, where my Bible says that Peter was the first Pope, or that the Pope is infallible. I will deal with that subject a little later on.

 

In this new system the Church told Kings, Governments and rulers what to do and when to do it etc. You were not allowed to believe what the Bible told you. You were only allowed to believe what the priests said and if he got things wrong, so did you. Everything was now in Latin which the ordinary people could not read or understand. So, how could you check what the priests etc were saying? You could not. The Bible says that we should check everything that we are being told about God and what others say about the Bible. So will you do that, check what I am saying here?

 

If you believed that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross was all that you needed for salvation you were in trouble as many found out over the centuries, because the Catholic Church says that you need that plus penance and the churches rules to find your salvation.

Many people were executed for not believing that. People were also put to death for having a Bible in their own language rather than in Latin, which only the priests could read.

 

The Devil doesn't like losing his power over the people under his control.  He wants them to be kept in the darkness forever, but the good news of salvation brings light to the soul of the seeking person.

 

Another one of these changes was that you could not worship on Saturdays, it now had to be on Sundays.

 

Here in Wales I was told that we used to hold worship services on Saturdays until the early 8th century A.D. at least, but could have been a bit later, when Rome put a stop to churches worshipping on a Saturday.

 

Over a period of about 400 years all the Jewishness was taken out of Christianity by the various decrees that came out of Rome.

If you go to my website threewarnings.co.uk and look at the first warning you will find out more of what the Catholic church did to the Jewish people of Great Britain. At this time all of the Jewish feast days were done away with and were replaced by Christmas, Easter and other days which are not found in the Bible.

 

These two days celebrated fertility goddess's and are nothing to do with the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This was the blatant Christianisation of Pagan festivals.

 

It was probably at this time that we also had three other days added in, which were Michealmass, Candlemass and Lammas. These are quarter days throughout the year when as I understand it, rents were due to landlords. But, there is one thing that you should notice and that is that these days all end in the word Mass.

 

While thinking about these days with Mass in them, I decided to look up several websites to see what I could come across.

This is what I found.

 

Lammas day was when "Peter's Pence" was rigorously collected. It seems that it was a rent paid by people who lived on church ground. This tax was collected on August 2nd every year, St Peter's Day, and given to the Pope for his upkeep in Rome.

 

 

No wonder the Popes were rich and the people were poor. It started way back in Saxon times it carried on in the U.K from 1031 A.D. to 1555 A.D. when the Catholic Church was finally disbanded in England and Wales.

 

Michealmas was the day that the Archangel Michael was honoured.

 

Candlemas was held on Feb2nd each year to honour three things.

 

1. Presentation of Jesus.

2.His first time in the Temple.

3.Mary's purification.

 

It also has to do with Jesus being the "Light of the World".

 

It is thought to have started around the fourth century A.D. with the lighting of candles starting one hundred years later. This idea of Candlemas supposes that Jesus was born on December 25th.

 

 

 Not true because the Bible does not say at what time of the year when Jesus was born. It is thought that he was born round about the time of the "Feast of Tabernacles", which is in the Autumn.

 

Christmas was a Pagan festival of fertility as was Easter. The teachings about all of these feasts are totally false. They are not Biblical in any shape or form, so please get back to your Bible, preferably the KING JAMES one to see if I am right or not. These false things came in after 313 A.D. when Constantine made Christianity the State religion. If you really believe these things then I have to say that you are not a Christian at all. I am sorry to have to disillusion you on these things, but I would be failing in my duty if I do not point out to you the errors which you believe at present. You only need Jesus Christ for your salvation, you do not need a church of any description or a set of rules, you only need JESUS CHRIST for salvation and your good works will never ever be enough to get you into Heaven. Just study your Bible to check what I am saying here.

 

 

Go to the book of Romans chapter 3 verse 23 and Romans chapter 6 verse 23, where you will see that Jesus is all that anyone needs for salvation.

Back to the era from 313 A.D. to 1500 A.D.

 

In the eighth century A.D. there was a king who ruled most of Western Europe by the name of Charlemagne, (Charles the Great). He had only one goal which was to unite all of the Germanic speaking countries of that time and to convert them to Roman Catholicism. This was achieved by war and conquest. At the Battle of Verdun, (782 A.D.) it is estimated that 4500 Saxons were slaughtered by this man and his army. Why? Because it was a case of convert or die. Conversions were not from the heart, but by force as it is in the Moslem world of today. Pope Leo the 3rd made this man the HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR. There is something wrong here in that a man who butchered his way across Europe is now a HOLY man. Where was his love and compassion for God and his fellow man?

 

Did you know that his ideas of a master race were to become an inspiration to Hitler and Napoleon centuries later. So did some of Martin Luther's ideas become a blueprint for the terrible times of the Nazi atrocities in the 1920's, but that is another story which I will not go into here.

In the year 1408 in the work "Constitutions" a rule was passed that it would be strictly forbidden to have a Bible in any other language than Latin. No one was allowed to translate it into English. It had to be Latin or else. This was at a convention convened in Oxford, England around 1407/1408.

If you look up the website about the "Arundel Convention", you will get more information here about the reasons why the Wycliffe Bible was condemned by Thomas Arundel, the Archbishop of Canterbury (1396 to 1414). A lot of it was to do with the power of the Catholic church over the people. The Council of Constance in 1415 condemned Wycliffe's Bible which was first published in 1382 A.D.

 

 There were many condemnations from both secular and the ecclesiastical establishments of that time about the writings of John Wycliffe.

 We need to thank God for men like Wycliffe who gave us the Bible in English, so that we could know and understand what God was saying to the world. These early reformers paid a heavy price to get our Bible translated into English. They were burnt at the stake and imprisoned etc. rather than go the ways of the Roman Catholic Church. At the same time is was strictly for bidden to translate anything into English from the Latin Bible. This rule was rigorously enforced by the Cardinal Wolsey and the Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More.

 

What was the reason behind this law?  If the ordinary people could read the Bible in English then the people would see that what Rome was teaching was wrong and that the Catholic Church would lose power.

 

 The Catholic Church could not have that, so Bibles in English were burnt and then in a few years to come so would the people who held such ideas of having a Bible in English. To have a Bible in any other language than Latin made you a heretic and the English Bible was also classed as heresy. The Bishop of London had many bonfires to burn that heretical book, the Bible in English. The Devil does not want people to know what God says about mankind and what God says about the sacrifice which He made to save us from our sins and from Hell. That is why all of the above things happened and are still happening in some parts of the world even today in 2015. I will tell you of the way to be saved later on in this essay.

 

Chapter 3. 1500 to modern times.

 

We now move on to the 16th century when there were a lot of changes in that one hundred years.

 

To start with Henry the eighth got rid of the Monastic system of religion in the country.(1539)

 

The lands of the monasteries were sold off and the king made a lot of money over these sales.  He only did this in one way was so that he could get a divorce from one queen so that he could marry another. By doing this act of closing down the monasteries he broke the power of the Roman Catholic church in England and Wales.

 

You could now worship in a different way. You could have a Bible in English, which meant that more people could hear the Word of God. Thus the Protestant Church was born. The word Protestant means for the testimony.

 

After Henry's death, his son Edward the sixth was king, but he died as a teenager before becoming of age where he would have ruled by himself. His half sister Mary was anointed as the Queen of England (from 1553 to 1558) and she took the country back to the old ways of the Catholic Church. There was now turmoil as the Protestants did not want to go back to that system that they had left a few years earlier.

 

Under her rule, you could not own an English Bible and Latin was being used again.

 

Anyone who did not agree to this was burnt at the stake. The first person to suffer this way a man named Rogers. There about 300 such trials and deaths in that five year reign.

 

Bishops were killed in this fashion as well as learned scholars and ordinary people. You need to get hold of Foxes book of Martyrs to get a fuller picture of those days and times where to say that Jesus was the only way of salvation could cost you a lot, namely your life. It was mainly in the south and east of the country where the severest of the penalties were exacted on those who stood up against Rome. The worst place was London.

Queen Mary was a Roman Catholic, and if her marriage to Philip, the King of Spain had gone on for much longer, this country would have returned to the Catholic Church and all that, that would have entailed.

 

We would have gone back to everything that this country did up until the dissolution of the Monastic system under her father, Henry the eighth. Praise God that this never happened.

 

In the next century (17th) we had the Puritans ruling the nation for about twenty years. These people tried to get back to the Word of God in the way that they did things and fought for changes to stop any Catholic influences in the country. Such as the wife of Charles the first, who was a Catholic.

In the 17th Century in which there was a lot of church rebuilding especially in London after the Great fire of London in 1666. This fire was disastrous, but in some ways a good thing as it got rid of the Bubonic plague which had been the scourge of Londoners for several centuries.

 

Sir Christopher Wren was given the task of rebuilding the City of London, and I am told that the lines that he drew up for the rebuilding were based on Masonic ideas.

 

How true that is I am not sure, but it was this plan that was used and stayed that way until the Blitz in World War 2 in 1940 which damaged a lot of the old City of London.

 

In the late 18th Century, God raised up men like the Wesley Brothers, George Whitfield and others to stop the French Revolution coming to our shores. Which if it had happened we would have gone back to the Roman Catholic ways again.

 

On to the 19th century now.

 

In this century there was an explosion of church building across England and Wales. There were several revivals in the things of God. I know that there were at least two such outpourings of God's Holy Spirit in Wales, and because of that you will see the number of churches that were built after each of these revivals. The word REVIVAL means to make alive once more something that is dying.

 

There was one revival which started in America and it spread across the Atlantic Ocean to the U.K. and Ireland, and then on to other parts of the world.

 

 The year was 1859 just before the U.S.A. civil war broke out, when many millions of people died. God moved in such a way that people found salvation in God's Word alone, sinners were saved, backsliders restored and the true church grew.

 

What was the biggest cause of this event happening. Simple really, ordinary people prayed in faith for God to change things as they were sad at the way things were going in their day and age. I wish that this was happening now in 2015.

 

About this same time there were many Anglican Church buildings being built across the nation as towns and cities expanded in size. People were still under the impression that CHURCH meant buildings and not the people in the buildings.

 

As I travel around what do I see of these buildings today? They are empty. They are anything but a place of worship. Many of them are houses, shops, garages, etc. but not places where people could meet to worship the one true God.

 

The costs of putting up these buildings was and still is burden on the worshippers who still use these buildings and this need never have happened if we had followed the Word of God and the way that the original church set things up.

 

If you honestly look at these things with an open mind you will see that we do not need big ornate buildings to worship in. We do not need all of the robes and mitres that the priests and others wear as they are simply not in the Bible at all. Please read your Bible and tell me where are these robes and mitres etc. mentioned, other than those which God ordained. Where are church buildings mentioned? They are not. I will be looking at these later on.

 

In the twentieth century I have only come across two revivals in the U.K. One in Wales from 1904 to 1906. The other in Scotland 1949 to 1953. None have been recorded in England that I can find since 1859, that is 156 years ago.

 

The first one that we shall look at is the one in Wales.

 

There are similarities in both of these revivals in that they were started by people praying for their nation and locality.

 

In West Wales several people were concerned about the way that the nation was sliding away from God, and they started to pray. God raised up a man by the name of Evan Roberts, In Loughor West Wales. The church is still in use today and it is well worth a visit to see and read the story of how God used one ordinary man and several ladies to change their country. Unfortunately and sadly this revival stopped at the English borders. One wonders how many lives would have found God if it had crossed over into England, as within ten years many of those men were to die in the First World War.

 

Only the Lord knows the answer to that question. This revival stirred the whole nation of Wales to turn back to God. It was not a big organised thing, it was brought about by people, ordinary people like you and me, praying earnestly for their nation to turn away from the pathway that it was on, and to turn to the living God.

Let us go on 40 years to 1948.

 

Again it was through people praying that the revival in Western Isles of Scotland happened. The churches there in the Hebrides did not talk to each other and were entrenched in their own denominations. But, there were two ladies who prayed and God broke in and many found God for themselves right across the whole of the area.

 

The two ladies who prayed were Peggy and Christine Smith. They were both housebound, elderly, one was blind and the other was crippled with arthritis. But they knew how to pray. From 10pm. to 3am. every night they prayed and God heard the cries of their hearts and answered in a mighty way so that people were saved from their sins and now were walking with God.

 

Like the previous revival in Wales the pubs were closed, police cells were empty, and so were the prisons.

 

 

There were no priests, just God doing what HE does best, changing lives.

 

This revival lasted almost four years. (1948 to 1953) there has not been such a revival as this since that time anywhere in the United Kingdom.

 

Chapter 4. The future of the Church.

 

If the so called Christian Church continues in the way that it is going it will end up joining the One World Church which is going to be ruled by Satan.

You do not believe me? Look at what is going on around us for a moment. A lot of the Evangelical Churches are going over to the Purpose Driven, Emerging Church, The Empowered 21 movement and all of these groups are joining in with the Roman Catholic Church.

 

These groups are not preaching a pure Gospel, they are watering it down so as to be acceptable to the Pope.

 

The attitude of the Roman Catholic Church has always been that we are not joining you, but you are rejoining us.

 

In the Anglican Church you have Anglo-Catholics, which are almost the same as the Roman version. Then you have the Low Church and High Church, whatever they are. Now we have the Pentecostal churches, Assemblies of God and Elim joining in with the Catholics.

 

We should be standing up and saying that we cannot join you because you are a false Church, teaching a false Gospel. But, no these groups and people are joining in with this heresy. These so called believers are turning their backs on the Bible to follow a false Christianity.

The Council of Trent in the 16th century cursed anyone who said that salvation is by faith alone, and that was ratified in the second Vatican Council in the 1960's.

 

As far as I know that is still their policy today in 2015.

 

The joining up of all these groups and people is going to lead to one thing==A WORLD RELIGION.

 

If you look at the Empowered 21 website you will see about 60 names mention there, of people who are amalgamating together for this world movement and they come from many church backgrounds. Evangelical and Catholic.

 

In the book of Amos there is a question asked and it is this, "Can two walk together unless they are in agreement?" The answer is no they cannot. So why are Evangelical Christians getting into bed with the Catholic Church? The answer is that they are being deceived by the Devil.

 

Everyone wants unity, but at what expense? This amalgamation of faiths and denominations will not produce the proper unity which the Bible talks about. This is a false unity which will mean that we find a common denominator for all of the people involved.

 

In turn it will mean something will have to be got rid of, and that will be the weakening of true belief in Jesus Christ and joining a false movement, which is under God's curse.

 

Go to the following verses in the Good old King James Bible.

 

2 Thessalonians chapter 2 verses 6 to 12 and note verse 11 in particular.

1 Timothy Chapter 4 verses 1 to 3.

2 Timothy Chapter 3 verse 13.

After you have read the above verses, please go to the Book of Revelations Chapter 13.

 

This is the ultimate destination of all of these religions joining together. There will be a One World Church, a One World religion and a One World Government, and woe betide anyone who ends up there as they will not be able to do anything without a mark being placed on your right hand or on your forehead. This is the Devil's copy of what God said that the Jewish people needed to do way back in the Torah.

 

 

If you do not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour before He returns to Jerusalem, then this is where you will be and from there you will be in Hell. No messing. It is up to you to make sure of your salvation while you have the time to do so.

 

Forget about church systems, robes, candles etc. Get right with God on your own with your Bible. Go to the Gospel of John Chapter three, verse 16 and there you will find what you need to do to be saved from Hell. You do not need a priest to tell you, let God tell you Himself.

 

Chapter 5.  Salvation or Church rules.

 

In this chapter we are going to have a look at what Salvation is and what Church rules are.

 

But before that I want to say the following thing. Our nation needs to get back to the Biblical ways of making laws for our nation. Laws that reflect what God says in the Bible. The same goes for Churches and us as human beings.

 

 

 If we leave the Bible out of everything, then all we will get is a horrible mess.

 

 Look at the laws which have been passed in our name by successive governments since the 1960's. Abortions on demand and same sex marriages (which are not marriages at all, but a blatant disregard for the Word of God) which are banned under God's Laws. What our nation needs at present is men and women full of the HOLY GHOST anointed power to preach the GOOD NEWS of God's love and salvation from the Queen down to the commoner and all in between. We do not need RELIGION but what we do need is God coming down to the nation once more in HOLY GHOST power.

 

Before the year 313 A.D. Salvation was by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ alone, and by no other way, or anything being added to it. But all of that changed in the year just mentioned. Today, we need to change things back to the Biblical way of what being a church, or rather what the Church (the believers in Jesus Christ) should be.

 

 

I will touch on that later on. First of all we need to get right with GOD, not a church, priest etc. Just you and God alone.

 

To get right with God, you need to go to Him directly in faith, believing that you are a sinner deserving Hell for all of the things that you have done wrong in your lifetime. Then you need to ask God's forgiveness for those things that you have done and to turn away from them. That is called repentance and we all need that every day of our lives, because we still make mistakes after accepting Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. The next step is to ask Jesus to come into your life and to take over and to fill you with His Holy Spirit, so that you will become a new person. After this you will need to tell someone of the changes in your life. This should be followed up by reading something every day from your Bible and prayer. If you have a Christian friend that you trust, then go and ask them to help you to progress in your new life. This is followed by being baptised, not to get rid of your sins, but to show that you are a new person in Jesus Christ.

 

 

Now I will come to the things that need to be changed in our personal lives and church life. We will look at what the Bible says about various things that churches do and read what the Bible says.

 

SALVATION.  Catholic Church says Jesus Christ plus the sacraments, church rules and good works.

Bible says, By Jesus Christ alone. Read Ephesians chapter 2 verses 8-9. By faith in Him alone.

 

PURGATORY. Catholic Church says that this is a place where you wait for any un-forgiven sins you had done before you died to be paid for by putting money in the offering box so that you can go to Heaven after the payment has been made by a living relative.

 

Bible says, ===============================

INFANT BAPTISM. Catholic Church says that infant baptism makes the child, a child of God.

Bible says,=================================

SAINTS. Catholic Church says that beatification can come after your death if you have done some miracles.

 

 

Bible says in Ephesians chapter 1 verses 1 and 15 and again in Romans chapter 1 verse 7, that we are the saints, i.e. those of us who have accepted Jesus as our own Lord and Saviour while we are alive and not after our demise from this world.

 

SACRIMENTS. Transubstantiation. Means that the bread and wine at a communion service becomes the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ again, every time that you take these emblems. This is crucifying Jesus all over again each time you eat the bread and drink the wine.

Bible says. Luke chapter 22 verses 19 to 20 that we are to do this as a memorial feast. It was to be a symbol of what Jesus was going to do for us on the cross at Calvary. ONCE AND FOR ALL TIME.

 

MARYOLOGY.  The Catholic Church says that Mary is the co-mediator with Jesus.

 

Bible says. 1 Timothy chapter 2 verse 5 that there is only one mediator between God and Man and that is JESUS CHRIST. No-one else.

34.

 

Read also Luke chapter 1 verses 46 to 47 where Mary says that God is her Saviour. So, if she needed a Saviour, that would have meant that she was a sinner who needed saving from her sins.

 

THE POPE. Classed as infallible, a bridge between God and man.

 

Bible says. Romans chapter 3 verse 23 All have sinned. Isaiah chapter 64 verse 6 says that all the good things that we have done are like filthy rags in God's sight. So the Pope is a sinner who needs saving like everyone else The Pope is also called The Pontiff.   Meaning a bridge between God and man. Read 1 Timothy chapter 2 verse 5 again. There is only one mediator between God and us and that as I said earlier is Jesus Christ. There is no other mediator at all. It is Jesus or nothing.

 

PRAYING FOR THE DEAD. This is praying for a dead person to be forgiven of their sins and go to Heaven. After death it is too late to change your destination or to be forgiven of any sin that has not been dealt with in this life.

 

Bible says,==================================

35.

PRAYING TO THE DEAD SAINTS. This means that you are asking for a dead person to help you to get into Heaven, perhaps after many centuries of the death of the so called saint. They cannot help you one iota.

Bible says,====================================

CONFESSIONS TO A PRIEST.  The priest is just a sinner as you and I are, so therefore he cannot forgive you of your sins.

Bible says. James chapter 5 verse 16 and Matthew chapter 18 verse 17 say about putting things right with others and forgiveness. You confess your sins to God and not a man.

PETER'S CONFESSION. Peter is not the rock on which our salvation is built.

Bible says in Matthew chapter 16 verses 16 to 19 that Jesus said that it was on Peter's words about Jesus in verse 16 was what he was talking about and meant.

 

It was not meant to be Peter, but on the fact that Peter said that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God and also that He is the promised Messiah.

CONVERTS. The Catholic church makes converts to its cause, which is to be a world leader in religion. Actually it wants to be the world ruler in that cause. The old adage of the Catholic Church is "Convert or die", and we see this coming about in the book of Revelations chapter 13.

Bible says in Matthew chapter 28 verses 18 to 20 that we are teach everyone about being a disciple. This takes a lot of time to become a true disciple of Jesus Christ. He taught His disciples for three years.

 

MONASTERIES and NUNNERIES. idea is to get away from the world.

 

Bible says in Mark chapter 6 verse 31 that Jesus went up a mountain with His disciples to be apart from the crowds for only a short while. There is nothing that I can find in my Bible which says that I should lock myself away from the world for years on end.

Sometimes we need to get away from the situation that we are in for a short while, so that we can commune with the Lord, but not for years on end locked away from the world in a monastery.

 

Today, August 16th 2015, I was given a cutting from the TIMES newspaper dated 15th August 2015 about the Catholic Church, which will show you that it has not and probably will not ever change what it believes. What I am going to quote to you is totally against what the Bible teaches about salvation.

The article was written by Tom Kington and is about the forth coming year long festival in Rome starting in December 2015, when special security measures will be put in place for those who wish to attend this festival.

 

Quote" The special measures will be put in place as a Holy year of mercy, announced by the Pope in March (2015) gets under way in December. During the festivities, pilgrims will earn indulgences, or remission of sins, by passing through a holy door at St. Peter's Basilica that is usually shut." End of quote.

 

Also in the same article we read and I quote "As many as 25 million people are expected to take part, but they will have to register on line before visiting Rome, specifying the time they wish to earn their indulgences". End of quote.

 

Then there is a third quote which says that those checks being made before the people arrive in Rome are designed to stop people "looking for quick relief from their sins." The Pope also stated that he does not want this pilgrimage" to be a mechanical act undertaken by those who think just passing through the holy door is enough to get them an indulgence". The writer also put in another piece here saying that pilgrims need to take time for reflection and change.

 

The last quote says that Catholics who could not come to Rome could get their indulgences in their own dioceses.

 

This is total blasphemy against the Word of God and shows what the Catholic church is still teaching its own people=== LIES. I am sorry to have to say that, but that is what it is still doing and will do in the future.

 

 

A person can only be saved by accepting what JESUS DID AT THE CROSS, ALONE,  where He died for our sins, and there is no other way to get saved at all. It is Jesus or nothing.

 

This next piece is an open letter to the Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, Clergy and Laity of the Roman Catholic Church.

 

Members of the Catholic Church you will have by now read the article so far about the changes which Constantine, the Roman Emperor brought in during his reign in the Fourth Century A.D. These changes were not scriptural in the ways that I have tried to set out before you. You cannot earn your salvation as it is the gift of God to mankind. You cannot earn a gift. The only way to find salvation and forgiveness is in the Lord Jesus Christ alone.

I am begging you to go back to the Bible, i.e. The King James  Bible of 1611, and read the verses which I have already mentioned previously about being saved. There is no other way which God will accept us, other than through His Son Jesus Christ.

 

 If our good works could save us then Jesus would not have needed to die for us. But our good works alone are not enough to save us and never will be. So, please forget about good works as a means of earning our salvation. When we confess our sins to God, He alone is the only one who can forgive us, not the priest as he is a sinner just like the rest of us, and he needs salvation as well.

 

There is so much more that I could say here but I do not want to weary you with a very long and tedious discourse on what you believe and what the Bible says.

 

But, what I do want you to do is to come to Jesus and to ask Him to forgive all of your past errors and for Him to enter your life and for you to get out of the false stuff and seek God directly as to what you should do and as to where you should go.

 

I trust that you will see what I am saying here and act upon it for your own sake.

 

As far as I am concerned the Roman Catholic Church is a false church, so you need to do something about what you have been reading in this essay.

 

 

I am not getting at the people, but the false system which you are involved with.

 

Yours faithfully for The Bible.

 

John.

 

Now I am going to write to the Archbishop of Canterbury about some of the things that they allow in their churches.

 

Dear Archbishop, like the Catholic church your priests wear robes. Do you know where a lot of that started? It started in Babylon many centuries ago. Do you know where the Bishop's mitre comes from? That comes from Dagon the Fish God and is in the shape of a fishes mouth. If you go to your Bible you will read in 1 Samuel chapter 5 verses 2 to 7 about Dagon. These verses tell us what happened to Dagon the fish God when it came into contact with the things of the Most Holy God of Israel. It fell at the feet of the Ark of the Covenant of God and was smashed to pieces.

 

There is a lot of Paganism in your denomination which I have seen where your predecessor was at an Eisteddfod here in Wales wearing a druids outfit.

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Now, is he a Christian or a druid? You cannot be both.

 

What about the crosses which are paraded at special events? Are they to be found in the Bible? No, they are not.

 

If you want God's blessing on your denomination you need to get back to Sabbath worship, which is Saturday and to reintroduce the Jewish feasts which were taken out by the Roman Catholic church.

 

Your denomination needs to get back to the Biblical ways of doing things. You, Sir, need to start to get right with God as I have said elsewhere in this essay, and to start believing what the Bible teaches and not what men teach.

 

There is much more that I could say here but will not for the sake of time. But, we all need to get back to the Bible and do what it says that we must do, and get rid of all the rubbish which has come in over many centuries.

 

No-one needs religion, but we all need Jesus Christ as our Saviour.

 

Yours faithfully for The Bible. John

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Chapter 6. The Charismatic movement.

 

The Charismatic movement started about the same time as the sexual revolution in the late 1950's early 1960's.

 

At this time in our history we were getting over the effects of the last world war and all of the restrictions that this brought about. There were restrictions in the food markets, money markets, travel etc. The population was crying out for change and because it did not come about quick enough people in some ways started to rebel against everything. The Christian Church was not immune to these things either. Young people wanted more modern music instead of the old hymns which stood the test of time. They started to copy the Rock and Roll ideas for church music.

 

I, personally, do not like Rock and Roll church services as there seems to be a very great lack of reverence and it just becomes a load noise and you cannot understand any of the words being sung. This is not worship at all.

 

In one church where I was a member, the noise was so bad that a lot of us older people would go out into the foyer because the sound of the so-called music was hurting our ears. I still say now, as I did then, "GOD IS NOT DEAF", so why have the music so loud that if there are any words being sung, you cannot hear them. What of the so called musicians? They must be going deaf at an early age as their hearing is and will be affected by the continuous loud noise that they are making.

 

Right, let's go on to what these charismatic groups do.

 

We have seen how they play their worship music now what about the songs used?

 

A lot of these songs are not worship at all, they are just songs and some of them that I have heard say nothing about God or Jesus. Some of these songs are all about me and what I am doing. Others are just like mantras that just repeat the same lines over and over, again and again. I must admit that some of them are very good, because they are based on the Word of God and can lead us into a closeness with the Lord, but most of them don't.

 

We don't seem to sing the good old powerful hymns like, "When I survey the wondrous cross", or, "There's power in the blood" anymore. I wonder why. Partly because hymns about the blood of Jesus being shed for us on the cross of Calvary are " old hat" and not wanted in the modern way of doing things. Remember the verse from the Bible which says " Without the shedding of blood there is no remission" Hebrews Chapter 9 verse 22.

 

If your salvation has no blood in the equation and only good works and church rules, then you cannot be saved and are not saved at all. Hymns that mention the blood of Jesus remind us very clearly of the cost to Himself to pay for the price of our sins===EVERYTHING.

 

I love the good old hymns as that is what I was brought up on and can sing such hymns from my heart.

 

We also have changed the meaning of worship from God to ourselves and what we are doing for God. We should be worshipping God for what He has done, is doing and will be doing for us in the future.

 

 

We are told "Now we are going to have a time of worship" as though we are going to switch it on like a tap to get a drink of water, or like a light switch. No, we should be worshipping God all day and every moment of the day, not when a "worship leader " says so.

 

Worship leaders are not mentioned as such in the Bible, other than those mentioned in the Book of Psalms, in the introduction to each of the Psalms.

To end this section I will say again that the modern ways of church music in the charismatic, house church movement is not worship at all, it is just a loud NOISE.

 

I have a quote here from the book, " Evangelicals and Rome", by David Cloud. In the chapter  on Contemporary Christian Music and Rome, he uses a quote from a book called," Making Musical Choices", by Richard Peck, which I will quote here.

 

Quote." Aside from its commercialism and its increasing resemblance to the old world, contemporary Christian music is becoming a religious melting pot. Some in the community admit that they are not believers.

 

 

And while this is still an exception, CCM  is proud of its ecumenical and charismatic spirit. This ecumenism extends open arms toward apostate protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church." End of quote. A further quote from the same page (303) of the same book. Quote." Not one CCM musician that I know of stands against ecumenism and boldly for the Word of God, the New Testament Church, the whole counsel of Bible doctrine. ecclesiastical separation, personal separation from the world, etc" End of Quote.

 

Let us now go on to the PRAYER MEETING.

 

The weekly prayer meeting can be very good and powerful if it is done in the right way.

What tends to happen is this.

Start with a long list of things to be prayed for.

Next several songs of so called praise.

Followed up by about forty minutes of teaching.

Then finally five minutes of prayer.

 

 

The sort of prayer meeting that I would like to see is that we come together with no formal starting point other than the time of starting, but then just come and pray and leave early if you need to.  No notices, no teaching, no singing but just purely praying. The prayer meeting should be the powerhouse of the church or fellowship, but it is usually the least attended meeting.

 

I have been in prayer meetings where you know exactly what someone is going to pray, as they prayed for the same thing last week, the week before and the year before that. You may smile at that, but I have heard it myself in prayer meetings.

 

Go back to the Book of the Acts chapters 2 to 4 and look there to see what powerful prayers were made and what happened afterwards. Things happened. Here is a question for you to think over. Do things happen in your prayer meetings or not? Do you see things change later on after much prayer?

 

Modern prayer meetings seem to be powerless, lacking faith in God to answer your prayers, shopping lists of what I want and not what God wants and generalisations.

 

 

Lets us go on to look at our Sunday Services.

 

Sunday Services were foisted upon us in the fourth century by Constantine after he declared that Christianity was to be a state religion. Here in Wales church services were held on Saturdays, which is the proper day of rest according to the Bible, but this change was forced on the Welsh people by Rome in the 8th century A.D. (Possibly happened a couple of centuries later, rather than the 8th century)

 

This was part of the plan to get rid of all the Jewishness out of the Bible and the church. If you go to my website www.threewarnings.co.uk and look at the first warning you will find there a lot more information on what the Roman Catholic Church did to get rid of anything and everything Jewish in the church and in secular life as well.

 

Another thing which I cannot find in the Bible is where one man stands at the front of the fellowship and conducts all of the meeting. It simply was not meant to be like that at all. There is no hint of a "one man band" in the Bible ever. It was meant for all to take part in.

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Nor do I find anything in my Bible that says that we must have lots of robes, candles, incense etc. to run a service. You do not find it in the early church, so where did it all come from? It came from the minds of human beings, not God.

 

Where do you find Popes, Cardinals, Archbishops, Archdeacons in the Bible? You only find the lists of church offices given in the letters of Paul the Apostle, which do not include the titles given in the list  which I previously mentioned.

 

In the services where one person leads from the front, no-one else gets look in. This is not the Biblical way at all. In the early days of the church, you will read that they shared everything, going from home to home after being taught by the Apostles. They asked questions and sorted out the answers when they did not understand something. It was not a ONE MAN BAND at all.

 

I have a list of the Gifts and ministries that God has given to His true church and you can find them in the following chapters of the Bible.

Romans chapter 12 verses 6 to 8.

Ephesians chapter 4 verses 11 to 12.

1 Corinthians chapter 12 verses 4 to 11 and verses 28 to 31.

 

God will give His gifts to whoever He chooses to build up His church and to equip them for His service. They are not for EMPIRE building by one person. They are given to us to use for the benefit of others who need teaching etc.

 

Let us now go on to the Communion Service.

 

This part of our church services is sometimes taken lightly, too lightly in some cases.

 

I have seen churches where the communion is set out ready to be used by the congregants and then the Pastor says that we don't have time for it and it is cancelled. To me this is an insult to the Lord. We are told, by Jesus, to remember Him.

 

In Acts chapter 2 we read that the communion service was part and parcel of their everyday living.

 

 

It was part of a meal in the homes of the believers, it was not a separate thing to be done once a week, nor was it just tacked on to the end of a church service either. Jesus said that every time we do this we remember His death and resurrection. Another thing that I have noticed is, that it is sometimes taken very lightly by people who do not realise what they are doing. I have seen parents take the bread and the wine and give it to their children. Young children do not, nor can they understand what it means to take the communion bread and wine as they do not know what they are doing. The Communion service should be an integral part of the service, for those who know and love the Lord Jesus Christ and who are forgiven of their sins. It is not an add on to the rest of the service.

 

You can read more about the Communion service and what we should be doing and our attitude to it, in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 verses 23 to 30. In this chapter, the Apostle Paul, says that we should take the bread and wine only after we have examined our own hearts.

 

 

When we have done that then take the elements to remember what Jesus Christ did for us at Calvary. We should not take these elements casually or in a flippant manner. So, please be careful how you behave towards the Communion Service as you could be adding problems to your soul. You should also read the verses around the ones that I have mentioned as they are just as important. They tell us what this church fellowship was doing prior to eating the communion bread. That is something which you can look up for yourself.

 

Chapter 7. Get right with God.

 

In this chapter we are going to start to put things right and get back to what churches and fellowships should be. To start with we are, the true believers, the real church. It is not the buildings that we meet in.  Another thing we need to remember is that it is Jesus Christ who is the head of the church. It is not any Archbishop or Pope.

 

If anyone says that a church is so and so's church, then it might not be God's church. If it is being run by a man then God might be left out of things.

Jesus said that He would build His church, which will be, and is, the church of those who are redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ at Calvary.

Let us go on to the next bit, which is to go back to the Bible, which should be our sole authority for our lives as true believer in Jesus Christ.

 

We need to rethink the things which we have been taught in the past to see if they line up with the Word of God. If they do not then get rid of them.

I have had to do that myself in the past. Let me explain here  what happened to myself. I grew up in an Open Brethren Assembly. As I look back over the years that I was in this Assembly (which I thank God for) there were some things that they taught that I now find were not quite right. In late 1969 I bought my first house, which meant that to get to that church, I had to go to the meetings from  different part of town to where I previously lived.

 

On the first Sunday morning going from my new home, I met a lady on the bus who knew me from childhood and she was the means of me starting to rethink a lot of things which before I did not believe were from God. The Brethren Assemblies did not believe in the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. They taught that these gifts ended at the completion of the Bible. I believed that as I had no outside means of checking this out. But, through this lady telling me about what she had experienced in her own fellowship, I started to rethink what I was being taught. After a few years (actually it was 14 years of searching in the end) of searching the Word of God I had changed my opinions right around to believe what I had denied for years.

 

What I am trying to say here is, you need to line up with the Bible what you have been and are being taught. if you should find that it is not in the Bible then get rid of it. Ask the Lord to open up your understanding of what He says in the Bible, so that you will know the truth, which will set you free.It is time to change our thinking about buildings. God is not interested in what we build for show.

 

 

He is only interested in our heart conditions towards Him. We do not need big Cathedrals and Abbeys etc in which to worship the Lord. As lovely as some of these buildings are, they are not what God wants. He wants us.

 

Look at the following story in Luke chapter 19 verse 9.

 

Jesus is talking to Zacchaeus about salvation and his need of it. Did Jesus say go to a church to get saved? No! He said that salvation had come to his house that day.

 

In John chapter 4 verses 22 Jesus is talking to a woman at the side of a well and He tells her that SALVATION is of the Jews. He did not say from a church building, or a denomination, or a set of rules. He said that it is from the Jews. (Don't forget that Jesus was born a Jew) Jesus said that there is no other way to Heaven except by Himself. No matter what you say or do, or believe, there is still only one way to Heaven and that is by JESUS CHRIST ALONE.

 

Churches want to make CONVERTS Jesus said to go and make DISCIPLES. Discipleship means discipline, which in our modern times is not a nice word to use, because the ungodly people will tell you that this restricts our freedoms etc.

 

Jesus took twelve men and trained them for three years to be the men that they became after his resurrection from the grave. Even though one of them became a traitor. To make a disciple will take time, effort and money. It is a costly and time consuming thing and I thank God the people who disciplined me in the things of God when I was a young man, as it was the basis of my going on with God for more than 60 years.

 

Chapter 8. The Epilogue.

 

As we come to the end of our short study about the church, what was and what has become, I will go over some of the main points once more so that you will see where the Bible says one thing and people say something totally different.

 

It is time to change our ways and thinking about what the church is really about.

It is time to take the Bible seriously once more and to believe what is being taught in it.

It is time to rethink a lot of the things which you have been taught in the past and still hold to.

It is time to get rid of the false and to trust the Bible alone for everything.

It is time to check what you are being taught against the Word of God and if what you are being taught does not match up with that word, then reject it.

It is time that prayer meetings were proper prayer meetings again and not what they have become.

It is time to get right with God once more.

So when are we going start to do this? How about right now?

What needs to be changed is the following.

False teaching which is not from the Bible.

False doctrines.

Denominations.

 

We need to get back to the ways that the Early Church operated as found in the Book of the Acts chapters 1 to 4.

 

We need to start praying for Governments and all who have authority over us, so that Godly laws will be passed for the good of all of the nation.

The churches need to get rid of all the ungodly things that they have allowed to come in and be practised.

 

We need to acknowledge that without God we cannot do anything and are just sinners saved by His grace alone.

 

We need to get the Holy Ghost fire once more into our souls so that we become the men and women of God, not of a denomination or church.

We need to see powerful prayer warriors in action again to turn the nation back to God and His ways.

 

If we do not change, or refuse to change then we are in danger of coming under the judgement of Almighty God.

 

I have put my case before you, and now you have to make a choice as to whether you will follow God and His word, or your denomination and its rules. It is entirely up to you and I pray that you will make the correct choice.

 

To sum up. If our nation is to be really great once more it must change the ways that Governments have gone over the years, by getting rid of all the ungodly things that have been allowed to come into our laws. We also need to see the churches repent of allowing unbiblical practices to become part of the religious life of the nation.

 

Christians, who know and love the Lord Jesus as their Lord and Saviour need to repent and turn away from the false teachings that are prevalent today and which are leading many people astray. We also need bold preachers of the truth who will stand up and tell the nation where it is going wrong.

 

We also need the simplicity of the early churches ways of doing things once more.

 

It short, IT IS TIME TO CHANGE THINGS.

 

Websites and books used in this essay.

1. www.threewarnings.co.uk

2. Evangelicals and Rome.

3. Bible- King James Authorised Version.

4.Greatside .com

5. J.P. Summerville

6. www.sacred text. com

7.wr.com

8.Time and date.com

9. Wikipedia.

10. www.bl.uk British Library.

11. History Channel.

12. Born again Christian info.

13.Christian History. net

14. www.bible-researcher/arundel

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