Church and Christianity

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Martin Luther: The Midwife

John David Clark, Sr. - August, 1999

“MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, MOTHER OF HARLOTS.”

(Rev. 17:5)

One of the most talked about men in all of world history is a monk named Martin Luther. In 1517, this courageous Roman Catholic professor nailed ninety-five comments (called “Theses”) on the door of the chapel in the castle at Wittenburg, Germany, concerning what he considered to be important matters of faith. At the time, in Western Civilization, the Roman Catholic Church was the only choice Christianity gave to those who wanted to be a Christian. In Eastern Europe and parts of Asia, Christianity was mainly the Greek Orthodox Church, but in the West, Roman Catholicism was virtually all that Christianity offered – until Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the chapel door.

Martin Luther was protesting some of the excessive doctrinal claims and some of the wild money-grabbing tactics of high-ranking ministers within the Catholic Church; he was not trying to start a new brand of Christianity. In particular, Luther was disgusted with the selling of pardons and “indulgences” by some church leaders. It was a lucrative business that had grown to absurd proportions in his time. Some of these “hawkers of pardons”, to use Luther’s phrase, persuaded souls to believe that “as soon as the penny jingles into the money box, the soul flies out [of purgatory].”

In his 95 Theses, it is clear that Martin Luther was willing to be a loyal, obedient servant of Christianity and of the Roman Catholic Pope and that he believed that the Roman Catholic priesthood was the priesthood ordained by God for the Church. Of the Pope, Martin Luther wrote in Thesis #9, “....the Holy Spirit in the Pope is kind to us...” And in Thesis #53, he insisted that those who were engaged in false teaching were “enemies of Christ and the Pope”.

In using such flattery, Martin Luther may have been hoping merely to win the Pope to his theological position on the sale of indulgences; still, if the Pope had agreed with Martin Luther (which he decidedly did not), it appears that Luther would have willingly continued to submit himself to the Pope and Catholicism.

In his Theses, Martin Luther endorsed whole-heartedly the Catholic myth of “Purgatory”. Purgatory, according to Catholic doctrine, is the place believers go when they die if they haven’t done enough in this world to prepare their souls to stand in the presence of God. In Purgatory, Catholics are taught, imperfect believers are purged from all sinfulness by suffering torment. (For a fee, Catholic clergymen promised to secure the release from Purgatory of your departed loved ones!). This doctrine is nothing short of lunacy, but Luther endorsed it. As I said, in writing his 95 Theses, he was not rebelling against the basic doctrines of Catholicism nor against its claims to be the true body of Christ.

As matters developed, Luther’s unyielding rejection of some of the most repugnant claims of Catholic priests in his day led to a division of Christianity in the West, a division that led to other divisions whenever there arose doctrinal controversies of sufficient gravity to seize upon the hearts of men. So, today, we have Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, and many others. Catholicism, the “Mother Church”, has produced many daughters, although she never intended to have any of them and hated every one of them when they were born. (Whores don’t want children.) And the fact that all her daughters have historically hated their Mother does not mean that they are not her offspring. It means only that members of the Christian family just do no love one another.

The spirit of Christianity is the spirit of Catholicism; Catholicism is the original and purest form of the Christian religion. And that spirit of Catholicism is the source of every Christian organization, and every Christian home prayer meeting or Bible study group. Every Christian sect in Western Civilization owes its existence to Roman Catholicism. Appropriately, Roman Catholicism is called the “Mother Church”; and because Protestant sects are of their Mother’s unclean spirit, they are rightly called “harlots”.

Martin Luther was instrumental in giving birth to forms of Christianity other than Roman Catholicism; therefore, I call him the midwife who first served the Great Whore when she began to bear her ugly children.

The Mother is the Great Whore, and her daughters are the harlots. And even though at times there has been much blood shed in their feuds with each other, there is an undeniable bond that unites all the family of Christian sects. But what is this mysterious bond they have? What is this basic similarity between the Mother and her daughters? In other words, what is the underlying, fundamental harmony that exists between the Roman Catholic Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, and all other Christian sects?

The answer is simple. Christians share in misunderstanding of the meaning of “church” that is so fundamental to their faith that they cannot deny it without rejecting the entirety of the religion of Christianity. The daughters received this faith from their Mother; it is as precious to them as life itself. It is their life, in fact, because without this doctrine, Christianity would not have come to exist. This doctrine brought it into existence and still sustains it.

This foundational doctrine of all Christianity, the one unifying element of Catholicism (the Great Whore) and of Protestant sects (her daughters) is that one can become a member of the body of Christ without being baptized with the holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in tongues.

NO ONE IS BORN AGAIN UNTIL HE IS BAPTIZED WITH THE HOLY GHOST WITH THE EVIDENCE OF SPEAKING IN OTHER TONGUES.

Jesus said, “I am the door.” In other words, Jesus alone can take someone into the body of Christ. “All that climb up some other way”, said the Lord, “are thieves and robbers.” Only Jesus has the power to make someone a member of the body of Christ. But how does the Lord do this? Paul told us, “By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body” (ICor. 12:13). Yes, the baptism of the holy Ghost that Jesus personally gives is the door to the real family of God.

Christianity claims that it is the family of God. But I say that it is not. How then can YOU know whether multiplied millions of Christians are telling you the truth when they say that Christianity is the family of God or whether that I am telling you the truth when I say it is not?

Fortunately, there is an easy way to determine whether or not Christianity is the family of God. That way is to find the answers to these two simple questions: First, how does one become a member of Christianity? Second, how does one become a member of God’s family? If the answers to those two questions differ, then Christianity is not the family of God.

As earlier mentioned, Paul said that we are baptized by the Spirit into the body of Christ. So, when Jesus baptizes a person with the holy Ghost, does he baptize a person into Christianity? Obviously not. One becomes a member of Christianity by his own will. People join Christianity; they are not baptized into it by Jesus. Becoming a member of a sect in Christianity is of the will of man; it is not a work of the Spirit of God. But those who are baptized with the holy Ghost become members of the body of Christ by the operation of God; they are born into God’s family “not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” This simple truth exposes the claims of every Christian sect to be false when they claim to be the family of God. Jesus baptizes no one into any sect of Christianity. Therefore, Christianity is not his family.

The underlying, uniting foundation of all Christian sects is that one may become a member of the family of God by his own choice instead of simply repenting and being baptized by Jesus into God’s holy family. My friend, how did you become a member of the congregation to which you belong? If you became a member of your congregation by joining it, you are in the wrong one. If you have joined any of the churches of Christianity, then you have become a kinsman of the Great Whore, and the Pope is your father, even if you hate him – and many of his children do! Listen to me, my dear brother! If you are a Christian, the Pope is your father, whether you know it or not, for he is the head of Christianity.

Historically, most conservative Christian groups have understood and taught that the Great Whore of the book of Revelation is Catholicism. I have heard that truth taught many times by a number of conservative Christian teachers. What these same Christian teachers have never been able to see, however, is that the daughters of the Great Whore are the Protestant denominations to which they themselves belong!

When the Spirit cries, “Come out of her, My people”, God is telling us to come out of Christianity in its entirety. “HER” is not only the Great Whore; it is also her daughters. “HER” is the spirit of false religion in the name of Jesus.

The Great Whore claims to be a queen (Rev. 18:7), but whom does she claim as her husband, the king? Jesus, the King of kings. She also claims that she “is no widow”. That means that she teaches that her husband is still alive. Isn’t this what one hears in Christian places of worship, that Jesus lives today? (The Whore must tell some truth; otherwise, she would deceive no one!) Moreover, she claims that she will “see no sorrow” because she, as the bride of Christ, will be spared from the coming wrath of God. But because she makes false claims in the name of the true Lord, her destruction shall come suddenly and without remedy (Rev. 18:8).

No, my friends, the famed theologian Martin Luther did not provide a way of escape for God’s children from the Great Whore (despite his great reputation to the contrary). He merely helped deliver the first of her many daughters. That first daughter (and later, the others) angrily rejected some of the “Mother Church’s” ways and doctrines, but none of them rejected the most wicked of all her doctrines. The false claim to be God’s family is the foundational lie upon which all Christianity is based. It is the most successful lie Satan has ever persuaded men to believe and to tell.

All of the Great Whore’s daughters have hated some of their Mother’s ways and teachings, even as they followed her perverse example in offering to men the opportunity to join a church instead of teaching men to repent so that Jesus would baptize them into the body of Christ. But the daughters must claim to be the family of God because that is their inherited nature. It is the distinctive family trait of Christianity to lure men with promises of eternal pleasures (they are harlots, remember) to join the church.

Protestants speak in glowing terms of the man they esteem to be the original Protestant, Martin Luther, but those who walk after the Spirit are neither Protestant or Catholic. They have NO part in Christianity. They take no sides in Christianity’s family disputes. The wise “touch not the unclean thing”. They keep themselves pure. Concerning Christian sects, the wise understand that THEY ARE ALL WRONG and that the only people right with God are the ones who are hearing and obeying His wonderful voice RIGHT NOW.

My brother, my dear sister, do you know what the Spirit is saying to the family of God RIGHT NOW? If not, get alone with God and seek Him and you will hear in the deepest recesses of your soul a still, small voice pleading in most earnest tones, “Come out of her, My people!”

And when you heart it, obey.