Is Prayer/Veneration/Worship to Mary Biblical?

self | 12-14-14 | ealgeone

[ealgeone]

The reason for this article is to determine if the worship/veneration given to Mary by the catholic church is justified from a Biblical perspective. This will be evaluated using the Biblical standard and not man’s standard.

[GBA]

That was then. For our times, the word is "comprehension".

[GBA]

What you have called "HERESY" I see as being, at minimum, an accurate observation.

If you had read all of the vision message, you would have read this quote from Mary:

treason barricades unity among brothers, insincerity of heart induces God's Cup to augment; they wrenched the Body of My Son, divided It, mutilated It and paralysed It; I am reminding you all that through Him, all of you have in the One Spirit your way to come to the Father, yet you remain divided under My Son's Name; you speak of unity and peace and yet stretch a net for those who practise it; God cannot be deceived nor is He convinced by your arguments; the Kingdom of God is not just words on the lips; the Kingdom of God is love, peace, unity and faith in the heart: it is the Lord's Church united in One inside your heart; the Keys to Unity are: Love and Humility;

Jesus never urged you to divide yourselves, this division in His Church was no desire of His; I implore My children to unite in heart and voice and rebuild My Son's primitive Church in their heart; I am saying My Son's primitive Church, since that Church was constructed on Love, Simplicity, Humility and Faith; I do not mean you to reconstruct a new edifice, I mean you to reconstruct an edifice inside your heart; I mean you to knock down the old bricks inside your heart, bricks of disunion, intolerance, unfaithfulness, unforgiveness, lack of love, and reconstruct My Son's Church by reconciling; you need intense poverty of the spirit and an overflow of wealth of generosity, and not until you understand that you will have to bend, will you be able to unite;

That sounds like both a good idea and that there's not much time left to correct OUR error, an error that only benefits the enemy, not us, and hurts the Holy Trinity.

[Dutchboy88]

"...do you affirm or deny that the LORD Jesus Christ commanded his Jewish Apostles to teach all nations and baptize them with water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit ? Yes or no ?"

I absolutely DENY that the text reports Jesus saying that the eleven Jewish disciples (soon to be apostles) must baptize newly made disciples with water. Rather the text says in the "name of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit." Do you have a reading impairment? This is like the fourth time I have said this.

It is your Roman cult which has added the term "water" to the text, just as it added a number of other things to the text (Peter is the first Pope, indulgences, purgatory, veneration of Mary, sacerdotalism, genuflecting, rosary beads, the sacraments, etc.) It is Rome which has promulgated the man-made religion. We ask only to return to the message of rescue described in the Bible.

[GBA]

For what it's worth, I think this message is a good and timely read:

They Rip My Traditions To Install Frills And Human Doctrines
Tell Them That The God They Have Forgotten Has Never Forgotten Them
May 27, 1993

So, here we are eleven, almost 12 years later in a fundamentally transforming world with a head of the dragon in almost all of its houses, including the one we live in.

More details here from the message of August 5-29, 1990: The Ten Commandments.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Let me explain to you how Catholics believe we are saved (and this is all from the Bible):

• By believing in Christ (Jn 3:16; Acts 16:31)

• By repentance (Acts 2:38; 2 Pet 3:9)

• By Baptism (Jn 3:5; 1 Pet 3:21; Titus 3:5)

• By eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood (Jn 6)

• By the work of the Spirit (Jn 3:5; 2 Cor 3:6)

• By declaring with our mouths (Lk 12:8; Rom 10:9)

• By coming to a knowledge of the Truth (1 Tim 2:4; Heb 10:26

• By works (Rom 2:6-7; James 2:24)

• By grace (Acts 15:11; Eph 2:8)

• By His Blood (Rom 5:9; Heb 9:22)

• By His righteousness (Rom 5:17; 2 Pet 1:1)

• By keeping the commandments (Matt 19:17)

• By our words (Matt 12:37)

• By enduring to the end (Matt.24:13)

A person might say, after studying all these Bible verses, "But this is so complicated! How can a person do all that?"

What you have to see is that "all that" adds up to one single thing, that is, being incorporated into Christ. That is how one attains eternal life, that is how one is saved: by being a member of the Body of Christ, you in Christ, Christ in you.

In this whole Universe, or shall I say in all possible universes or in all realms visible and invisible, there is only one safe place: and that safe place is "in Christ."

If that is what you mean by "Faith," then yes, it's by Faith. And all of these elements comprise this Faith in its fullest definition.

So now that with careful reference to the Bible I have answered your question, I have a question for you: what kind of faith saves? A living faith, or a dead one?

[daniel1212]

Not as it's defined in Catholicism it's not.

Indeed, that was my point, as an entity claiming perpetual magisterial infallibility is novel.

Nor are the examples you sited from scripture working for you're premise. You're first example taken from the Old Testament is the authority of the priests and judges of the Old Testament. That "hierarchy" can not be found in the New Testament "church".

In principal it is, for believers are enjoined to conditionally obey them who have the rule over us, whether civil or ecclesiastical. (Rm. 13:1-7; Heb. 13:7) But not as if they are ever assuredly infallible.

To inject the concept of "binding and loosing" into the edicts of judges and priests is a stretch.

Not at all. For instance, in Dt. 17, if there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being matters of controversy within their gates, then it was brought before the Levitical magisterial authority, whose judgment was binding to one, and loosing to the other.

According to the sentence of the law which they shall teach thee, and according to the judgment which they shall tell thee, thou shalt do: thou shalt not decline from the sentence which they shall shew thee, to the right hand, nor to the left. (Deuteronomy 17:11)

The Lord also enjoined conditional obedience to the Scribes and Pharisees, (Mt. 23:2) and who claimed the power of dissolving vows, etc. But not as being the supreme infallible standard, thus the Lord reproved their unScriptural judgments by Scripture. (Mk. 7:2-16)

But Dt. 17:8-13 corresponds to the context of binding and loosing in Mt. 18, in which an unresolved personal matter is brought to the church, whose judgment binds and looses, (Matthew 18:17) with one being in sin and the other vindicated.

In Acts 15 , there arise a doctrinal matter that warranted ecumenical judgment, and which Scriptural (Gn. 35:2; Ex. 34:15-16; Ezek. 30:30,31; Gn. 34:1,2,31; Dt. 22:28,29; 2Chron. 21:11; Gn. 9:4; Lv. 7:27; 17:13,14) judgment loosed the Gentiles and bound the Judaizers to obedience.

But which was not that of making a "remembered" extraScriptural event approx 1800 years after its alleged occurrence a binding doctrine, and teaching its unScriptural theology. Nor other traditions, and the basis for their veracity, that of perpetual assured magisterial infallibility.

In the New Testament examples you used the "authorities" were secular authorities. If you can find that "authority" described within the ekklesia of the New Testament I would like to see it.

Rather, if you can find New Testament leadership having no magisterial authority. That would be both unScriptural and contrary to basic Reformation teaching.

Note that there is spiritual and magisterial authority (of office). One may have the former but not be in the office of the later, yet in the church the latter is ultimately dependent upon manifesting the former if it will be considered authentic. Rome substitutes sppsd "unbroken" (which can mean rival popes, absences of years, men more morally like Judas than Peter, etc.) formal descent of office for valid ordination and authenticity of judgment.

The means of disciplining disobedient souls who were called members was never by the church using the sword of men, including using the state to enforce assent to ecclesiastical theological judgments, torturing and killing theological dissidents.

Instead discipline was by the passive means of disfellowship, as in

But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat. For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within? But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person. (1 Corinthians 5:11-13)

Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. (Romans 16:17)

And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. (Matthew 18:17)

A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject; (Titus 3:10)

And supernatural means such as seen in the death of Ananias with Sapphira his wife under Peter in Acts 5:5-10.

And that of Paul in 1Cor. 5 "To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." (1 Corinthians 5:5)

And due to heresy: Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme. (1 Timothy 1:20)

Thus Paul was not resting in historical descent nor bluffing when he stated,

For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. What will ye? shall I come unto you with a rod, or in love, and in the spirit of meekness? (1 Corinthians 4:20-21)

I told you before, and foretell you, as if I were present, the second time; and being absent now I write to them which heretofore have sinned, and to all other, that, if I come again, I will not spare: (2 Corinthians 13:2)

For though I should boast somewhat more of our authority, which the Lord hath given us for edification, and not for your destruction, I should not be ashamed: (2Co 10:8)

It was under such men who But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses..By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, By the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, (2 Corinthians 6:4,6-7), that the NT church saw its limited degree of unity.

Such purity, power and passion is much lacking today (myself included), but only insofar as the church manifest such can it claim to be the church of the living God, versus its institutionalized counterpart.

And it is obvious that the NT church was under leadership besides the foundational apostles, such as overseers such as Timothy and Titus were to "ordain elders in every city," and who among other things were to "rebuke them [unruly and vain talkers] sharply, that they may be sound in the faith. (Titus 1:5.13)

These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee. (Titus 2:15)

But note that such were to "be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers," (v. 9) which is not that of declaring one is infallible, and thus whatever it will infallibly decree is infallible and binding.

Likewise Timothy is told,

Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses. Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear. (1 Timothy 5:19-20)

Thus elders are singled out for discipline by an elder.

Moreover, Heb. 13:17 mentioned before enjoins believers to submit to those who sit in judgment ("hēgeomai," cf.Mat_2:6; Act_7:10;15:22; 2Th_3:15; Heb_11:11;13:7,24 who watch for their souls.

And which relates to Acts 15, in which the definitive judgment of James, confirmatory of what Peter and Paul believed, with all the apostles and elders an many brethren providing the corporate concurrence of the church overall, was enjoined to be observed by the churches,

That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well. (Acts 15:29; cf. 21:25)

This is the only example of a universal ecumenical decision, yet its veracity was based upon Scriptural substantiation in word and in power, and it certainly does not warrant the premise of perpetual magisterial infallibility when speaking universally on faith and morals, which is nowhere seen nor promised or necessary.

If the magisterial office errs, and does not correct itself (or worse, holds that it cannot err), then as God has often done, He can be expected to raise up men in correction and reproof, which is how the church began and has been preserved.

Contrary to this is the elitist Romish idea that an infallible magisterium is essential to correctly discern what is of God. Yet the church b\had its beginnings, with both writings and men of God having been correctly discerned and established as being so, and thus authoritative, without a perpetual infallible magisterium.

In time, cream rises to the top, but he that "climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber," (John 10:1) of which is Rome, which has has presumed to infallibly declare she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula, which renders her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares. Upon which premise the RC has his vain assurance of Truth.

itself has authority to discipline, thus the one judged to be in error in the Mt. 18 scenario would be by being marked for disfellowship, and that of the supernatural means of judgment, such as seen in the death of the deceivers amndelivering one

I would suggest you re-read your example from Numbers 30. Pay particular attention to the phrase "she has bound herself". The fathers and husbands were doing no binding or loosing. It was the woman who was held to her vow.

But it was the prerogative of her father or husband to affirm or deny that vow, which decision in a non-doctrinal issue God recognized.

[ealgeone]

By grace (Acts 15:11; Eph 2:8)

You cherry picked Ephesians 2 for your catholic perspective. Let's keep the verse in context for a clear understanding of what Paul is saying.

I've included the verses just before and after to keep things in context.

Ephesians 2:4-10

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,

5even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),

6and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

7so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

8For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;

9not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

10For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

Regarding James 2 you need to go back and re-read and keep it in context. You also need to review the account in Genesis with Abraham to have a clear perspective of what happened first....his faith leading to being declared righteous or his "works" that came about afterwards.

Context of a passage is key.

[GBA]

So, here we are eleven, almost 12 years later

Math? "eleven, almost 12 years later"???

My math needs some help: "twenty-one, almost twenty-two years later"

Apologies...

[BlueDragon]

Sounds like they may have cribbed that list from one of the more fundamentally sound Baptist or "Pentecostal" preachers.

Still, there is range of understanding even within [Roman] Catholicism as to what individual elements of that list can and actually do mean.

[BlueDragon]

Don't worry much about the math. That can be all set a-right.

It is doubtful there are 'tests' given in Heaven.

Answers provided --- yes... many do expect.

...but will I be able to remember -- be careful what questions one may ask? lol, no worries there, for whatever "questions" there may yet remain will be known without having needing to ask, and that which would be revealed simply enough in it's own essence, by the overall power and might of that essence be enough to set fully aside many sorts of wonderings any would have...

[aMorePerfectUnion]

“If I had one favor I could request of my FReeper friends for the New Year,”

I don’t think you understand this New Year’s Resolution process correctly...

:-0

[aMorePerfectUnion]

“If you had read all of the vision message, you would have read this quote from Mary: “

FIX!!!

“If you had read all of the vision message, you would have read this PURPORTED quote from Mary:

[annalex]

our "feet are quick to shed blood" is a spiritual fact, not in the least an exaggeration, even if we never actually take anyone out

The fact remains that when the language is stating a spiritual fact contrary to physical fact, the entire passage needs to be taken outside of the realm of stating physical facts. It is not then evidence of Mary's condition nor anyone else's condition in particular; it is said in a general sense to drive the point: "he himself may be just, and the justifier of him, who is of the faith of Jesus Christ". Of course, we notice the big exception made right in this sentence: Christ is technically part of "all" but He is "just". So is Mary, His deliverer, "for by the fruit the tree is known" (Matthew 12:33)

Merry Christmas! Please pray with me.

Mary Mother of God Pointing the Way

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope.
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve.
To thee to we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.
Turn, then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this, our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.

Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.
That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

[MayflowerMadam]

Prayer/veneration/worship to Mary actually is addressed in the Bible. It’s one of those pesky Commandments — the one forbidding idolatry. Exodus 20:4: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” Exodus 20:5 - “Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them”

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

Prayer/veneration/worship to Mary actually is addressed in the Bible.

This is the Catechism of the Catholic Church regarding Mary.

There is nothing regarding worship.

And when you find Luther's doctrine of Sola Scriptura in the Bible, let me know. It will be quite a trick, since the canon of Scripture wasn't assembled until centuries after the last book of the Biblia was written. How could a passage in the Bible refer to an as-yet-to-exist book?

[ealgeone]

Your picture captures catholicism perfectly......Big Mary.....little Jesus.

[CynicalBear]

>>By works (Rom 2:6-7; James 2:24)<<

By works? Not unless you think the Holy Spirit through Paul contradicted Himself. First of all, Romans 2:6-7 has nothing to do with salvation. It's concerning rewards for the believer not punishment for the unbeliever or believer. Then we have Paul proclaiming that man is not justified by works. Also we have Jesus words ""The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." So we have one verse that Catholics like to parade out proclaiming salvation based on works countering multiple passages saying salvation is not based on works. So Catholics have to totally disregard multiple passages of scripture to justify their position.

>>what kind of faith saves? A living faith, or a dead one?<<

The obvious answer to that is a living faith. But there you have just answered the question by "faith alone". You just admitted that all those things are a result of faith. It's the faith that saves and all those things are the results of that faith.

[CynicalBear]

The context we were discussing was the binding and loosing as the Catholic Church defines and uses it. Getting into the minutia of judicial binding and loosing in earthly affairs is diversion and not germane so I will simply back out.

[GBA]

FIX!!!

I agree. "PURPORTED quote from Mary" is accurate and fair.

My familiarity with the material makes me more accepting of it "as is".

One thing is certain, if the material is "as is", then what a blessing for us now in these times!