MONSTRANCE MARY? ~ EXPOSING HYPOCRISY ~ Part 24

In my research for this study, the above picture is one of the most appalling pictures I have come across. Monstrance Mary? For my protestant friends, a monstrance in the Roman Catholic Church is an open or transparent receptacle in which the consecrated “Host” is exposed for veneration. Always in the shape of a sunburst, the monstrance holds the “Host” or “Blessed Sacrament” (the eucharistic unleavened wafer of bread which has supposedly undergone transubstantiation and has become the actual blood and body of Jesus Christ). It is called the “Host” derived from the Latin hostia, which means “sacrificial victim”. To be clear, however, Christ was never a victim! He willingly laid down His life for the elect.

This “monstrance Mary” was designated as The Sanctuary of The Divine Mercy in Chicago. The iconic monstrance, “Our Lady of the Sign – Ark of Mercy”, draws people from Chicago and beyond for 24-hour Eucharistic Adoration in this historic church. According to the article below, “The iconic monstrance depicts the woman of Isaiah 7:14, “The Lord himself will give you a Sign – the Virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel,” and the woman of Revelation 11:19-12:1-2, “Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the Ark of His Covenant was seen within His Sanctuary…And a great Sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth.” Monstrance Mary article

The article goes on to say that her “appearance” is related to her Assumption into heaven. “Placing yourself before the Blessed Sacrament in adoration and praying from your heart, “Jesus, I trust in You,” promises to “change your life, bring healing, and gentle transformation.” Just no, no, no!!! God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.

As expected, those who worship false idols take Scripture out of context, as they do above. Isaiah 7:14 is taken out of context in the above article. Though it is a difficult passage to interpret involving what is called a double prophesy, the object of focus for the passage is not on the virgin but on the Son. The context is judgment. The Aramites and Israelites are seeking to conquer Jerusalem. King Ahaz, evil king of Judah, was fearful. It was his actions that contributed to Judah’s downfall which the Lord brought about in 586 B.C. Isaiah 7-10 speaks of the results and consequences of King Ahaz’s wicked ways. Isaiah, the prophet, approaches King Ahaz offering him an opportunity to receive a sign, but Ahaz refuses. In false humility, he declares he will not put God to the test. God responds with His own sign saying Ahaz should look for: “the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son…but before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste.” In other words, within a few years, Israel and Aram will be destroyed. Matthew 1:23 quotes this passage connecting it to the promised virgin birth of Jesus. The double prophecy (right now and future fulfillments) refers primarily to the situation in which King Ahaz finds himself, and then to the coming Messiah who would be the ultimate deliverer.

Revelation 11:19-12:1-2 says: And the temple of God which is in heaven was opened; and the ark of His covenant appeared in His temple, and there were flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder and an earthquake and a great hailstorm. A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; and she was with child; and she cried out, being in labor and in pain to give birth. Just like the passage in Isaiah above, this passage is connected with judgment. The events of these verses take place in the future during the time when the seventh bowl judgment is being poured out upon the earth.

Who is this woman? It is NOT MARY or the anything referring to the Roman Catholic Church! Let’s go back to Genesis 37:9-11. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Jacob (Israel) had twelve sons, the twelve tribes of Israel. Joseph was a favorite son of Jacob. Joseph was a dreamer of dreams. Then he had yet another dream, and informed his brothers of it, and said, “Behold, I have had yet another dream; and behold, the sun and the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” He also told it to his father as well as to his brothers; and his father rebuked him and said to him, “What is this dream that you have had? Am I and your mother and your brothers actually going to come to bow down to the ground before you?” And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind. In John’s vision, the woman was “clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (referring to the twelve tribes of Israel). The woman is Israel. The woman is not an actual woman at all but a symbolic representation of Israel who is pictured in the Old Testament as God’s wife, just as the Church is the bride of Christ.

 

In fact, there are three other symbolic women mentioned in Revelation. Jezebel (2:20) represents paganism; the scarlet woman (17:3-6) represents the ‘apostate church’; the wife of the Lamb (19:7) represents the true church. We will continue looking at each of these ‘women’ as our study progresses.

 

This woman the Roman Catholic Church claims to be Mary is actually Israel. Is this why the Roman Catholic Church mentioned above was so emboldened to put a replica of the ark of the covenant inside its sanctuary adopting it as their own? This is much more scandalous than it appears on the surface.

 

Mary gave birth to Jesus. This is true. It is also true that Jesus, the son of David from the tribe of Judah, came from Israel. Israel gave birth or brought forth Christ Jesus. Verse 5 says the woman’s child was a male child who would rule all the nations with a rod of iron, who was caught up to God and to His throne. This is Jesus. If one were to read the rest of Chapter 12 of Revelation, he or she would see that the setting is the time of the Great Tribulation during which time (at the halfway point), the Beast (Antichrist) will set up an image of himself in the temple that will be built in Jerusalem. This is the abomination of desolation that Jesus spoke about in Matthew 24:15 and Mark 13:14. When this event takes place, the Beast breaks the peace pact he had made with Israel, and the nation (living at that time) will have to flee for safety. This flight of the Jews is pictured as the woman fleeing into the wilderness. Verses 12-17 reveal how the devil will make war against Israel, trying to destroy her and how God will protect Israel in the wilderness.

 

The Roman Catholic Church puts great emphasis on Mary’s role in the church and in the work of redemption. Often, she receives much more attention, veneration, and adoration than the Son, though most Catholics refute this claim.

To understand where this goddess worship, along with the mother/child cults originated, we must go back to the beginning. Genesis 3:14-15—Then the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all the livestock, and more than any animal of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life; and I will make enemies of you and the woman and of your offspring and her Descendent; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel.”

The prophesy of a woman and a seed was given at the beginning. Every nation came from Adam and Eve, then Noah and his wife. They all knew of this prophesy. It is not hard to imagine how depraved hearts distorted that prophesy to their own liking as time went on. We know that many pagan religious beliefs had their roots in ancient Babylon. Goddess worship is a deceptive counterfeit of sound doctrine. Modern paganism, a.k.a Contemporary Paganism and Neopaganism, is a collective term for new religious movements influenced by or derived from the various historical pagan beliefs of pre-modern people. In polytheistic religions, a goddess is a female deity. I saw this first-hand in prison. “Mother Earth”, “Mother Nature”, the “sacred feminine”, or the “feminine divine” are terms you often hear within these movements. As feminism continues to rise in our own culture, so will the rise of goddess worship. This ‘spirituality’ appeals to women as a source of empowerment, while in ancient pagan cultures it was actually a form of sexual slavery resulting in women acting as temple prostitutes in temples devoted to the goddesses.

GAIA or Mother Earth is part of the whole ‘green’ movement. The goal of this movement is to unite the whole earth under the goddess Mother Earth, the earth seen as a female deity, a deity having a spirit to which humans can become attuned. Wicca was extremely popular in prison. Wiccans believe in a goddess and a horned god. The goddess of Wicca is also known as the “Queen of Heaven”. A common bond, nearly all religions have goddess worship. The Vatican is using its ecumenical tentacles to reach and unite all world religions using the deification of Mary.

Tomorrow, we will look more in-depth at the vision of Ezekiel in Chapter 8, but in keeping with this Queen of Heaven, I want to address one passage today. Verses 13-14 says: And He said to me, “Yet you will see still greater abominations which they are committing!” Then He brought me to the entrance of the gate of the Lord’s house which was toward the north; and behold, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz.  We talked about Tammuz back when we looked at the Tower of Babel. All the roads of paganism lead back to Babylon. We must remember that! A good article regarding the identity of Tammuz in this Scripture can be found here. Who is Tammuz?  The women weeping for Tammuz was made even more detestable because it was being done in the temple in Jerusalem.

There is a lot of confusion regarding who this person is, but that can be attributed to the age-old stories passed down through the generations. Some have said that Tammuz was the Mesopotamian god who, legend had it, was the reincarnation of Nimrod. Nimrod was the Babylonian king who took a wife named Semiramis. Semiramis was also Nimrod’s mother becoming “Queen of Babylon”. Supposedly, when Nimrod died, his mother Semiramis gave birth to a son named Tammuz. It was she who claimed that Tammuz was Nimrod reincarnated.

Regardless, different cultures have given counterfeit worship to this “Queen of Heaven”. Counterfeit trinities have also been a large part of various cultural religions. For example, the pattern of Father, Mother, and Son have been followed by Osiris, Isis, and Horus in Egypt and Nimrod, Semiramis, and Tammuz in Babylon.

Here are some fun facts (not) to also consider: Ishtar was known in Latin as Libertas, liberty. Libertas was referred to by Cicero, a Roman historian, as the “Mother of Harlots”.  In ancient Babylon, Ishtar means “Queen of Heaven”, and she was also known as “The Mother of Harlots” because prostitution was part of her religious practices. Because harlots were social outcasts, she was also referred to as the Mother of Exiles. This was later equated with the idea of immigration becoming the Mother of Immigrants. Some have said that the Statue of Liberty represents the ancient Babylonian goddess of love and fertility. In Buddhism, Ishtar is called Quan Yien and given the attributes of God.

In 1884, the Statue of Liberty, one of our national symbols, was given to America’s Freemasons and New York City from the Freemasons in France. Freemasons trace their origins through the ancient mystery religions to Babylon where organized occult religion began. The manifestation of Ishtar’s symbol is a star with 6, 8, or 16 rays within a circle. Lady Liberty wears a seven-spiked crown upon her head.

To be clear, I am not asserting that the Roman Catholic Church puts Mary inside the trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. While they do not put Mary in the godhead and do not call her a goddess, nonetheless, they do have her in a position of idolatry calling her “Queen of Heaven”. The title “Mother of God” is also misleading because it makes it seem as though Mary is God’s mother which distorts the attribute of God’s self-existence.

Mary was born into this world just like everyone else in the world. Mary was not ever virgin but went on to have other children. Mary, “ever virgin” or “perpetual virgin”, is still official Catholic dogma. The other children of Mary included James, Joses, Jude and Simon (Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55-56). Joseph knew her not until she had brought for her firstborn son, Jesus. (Matthew 1:24-25) To give the idea that the mother of Jesus would be somehow ‘unholy’ if she had physical relations with her husband is to infer that somehow sex is ‘unholy’ or that Mary is viewed as “higher” than a normal human being. Pope Paul VI had this to say about marriage: “The Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life…” However one dices it, Mary is held higher than any other human being.

The Immaculate Conception is that Mary was free from original sin. However, Mary was not born without sin. She, like every other human, needed a Savior. She confessed that God was her Savior in Luke 1. Scripture teaches that there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Nowhere are we taught to pray to or THROUGH Mary. We can clearly see that the pagan goddess of ancient days has been repackaged in many different guises through many different religions today.

Rome has taught as official dogma Mary’s assumption into heaven since 1950. Only 1950! We know that Jesus died, was resurrected from the dead, and ascended into heaven. That cannot be said of Mary according to God’s Word. Yet August 15th is a holy day of obligation for Catholics (faithful Catholics are obligated to participate in the Mass on that day). Listen carefully to these words which is a complete lie: On 1 November 1950, in the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus Pope Pius XII declared the Assumption of Mary as a dogma: By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.”

Then, listen to this: “Still, fundamentalists ask, where is the proof from Scripture? Strictly, there is none…The mere fact that the Church teaches the doctrine of the Assumption as something definitely true is a guarantee that it is true” (Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism, [Ignatius Press, 1988], p. 275).

They who speak “with the authority” of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul had better be speaking from Scripture, otherwise, they are speaking only from their own authority which is no authority at all.