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Religion See other Religion Articles Title: Christian Myth 5: Mary is the Mother of God Christian Myth 5: Mary is the Mother of God What is the origin of the myth? “Veneration of the mother of God received its impetus when … the pagan masses streamed into the church…. Their piety and religious consciousness (that of pagans converted to Christianity) had been formed for millennia through the cult of the ‘great mother’ goddess and the ‘divine virgin.’” The New Encyclopedia Britannica (1988), Volume 16, pages 326 and 327. What does the Bible say? “You are to conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High….. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God.” -- Italics ours; Luke 31-35, The New Jerusalem Bible. That passage of Scripture clearly states that Mary was the mother of the “Son of God,” not of God himself. Could she have carried within her the One whom ‘the heavens themselves cannot contain’? (1 Kings 8:27) She never made such a claim. It is the teaching about the Trinity that has sown confusion over the identity of Mary. By proclaiming her Theotokos (a Greek word meaning “God-bearer), or “Mother of God,” the Council of Ephesus, in 431 C.E., set the stage for Mary worship. The city of Ephesus where this church council was held had for centuries been at the heart of idol worship celebrating the fertility goddess Artemis. So it was that many aspects of the worship of the image of Artemis that “fell feom heaven,” such as processions, were integrated into Mary worship. (Acts 19:35) Another practice that crept into Chrsitian teaching was the use of images of Mary and others in worship. Compare these Bible verses; Matthew 13:53-56; Mark 3:31-35; Luke 11:27, 28 1 Kings 8:27 “But will God truly dwell upon the earth? Look! The heavens, yes, the heaven of the heavens, themselves cannot contain you; how much less, then, this house that I have built! FACT: Mary was the mother of the Son of God, not of God himself. The Trinity myth gave birth to the worship of Mary as the Mother of God. Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary -- Catholic Encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15459a.htm Devotion to Our Blessed Lady in its ultimate analysis must be regarded as a practical application of the doctrine of the Communion of Saints. … … to place the work of education under the patronage of Mary, the Queen of Purity. To this period is also due, with some occasional exceptions, the multiplication in the calendar of minor feasts of the Blessed Virgin, such as that of the Holy Name of Mary, the festum B.V.M. ad Nives, de Mercede, of the Rosary, de Bono Consilio, Auxilium Christianorum, and so on. Still later in date (seventeenth century at earliest) is the adoption of the custom of consecrating the month of May to the Blessed Virgin by special observances, though the practice of reciting the Rosary every day during the month of October can hardly be said to be older than the Rosary Encyclicals of Leo XIII. Not much controversy was maintained regarding the Immaculate Conception after the indirect pronouncement of the Council of Trent, but the dogma was only defined by Pius IX in 1854. … Matthew 6:7 But when praying, do not say the same things over and over again, just as the people of the nations do, for they imagine they will get a hearing for their use of many words. The Denunciation Just as Jehovah kept sending his prophets to Israel and Judah, he has sent his witnesses to hammer away at the message of his coming judgment. (Jeremiah 7:25, 26; 25:4, 8, 9) Especially since the spiritually invigorating year 1919, the anointed remnant of Christ’s brothers fearlessly presented God’s judgments, powerful messages of calamity, to Christendom. (Compare Jeremiah 11:9-13.) In that year the magazine The Golden Age was launched. Over the years and with its changed titles, Consolation (1937) and Awake! (1946), it has served to expose Christendom’s religious lies and its pseudo-Christianity. For example, the Golden Age of October 11, 1922, denounced false religion in these terms: “All efforts of the denominational church organizations, their clergy, their leaders and their allies, to save and re-establish the order of things in the earth . . . must of necessity fail, because they do not constitute any part of the kingdom of Messiah. That on the contrary, during the World War [I] the clergy of these various church denominations were disloyal to the Lord Jesus Christ in this, that they wrongfully united with big business and big politicians to further the World War.” The denunciation continued: “They further repudiated the Lord and his kingdom and showed their disloyalty by voluntarily uniting themselves with Satan’s organization and boldly announcing to the world that the League of Nations is the political expression of God’s kingdom on earth.” Finally came the message of “calamity,” or judgment: “There is now impending and about to fall upon the nations of the earth, according to the words of Christ Jesus, a great time of ‘tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor shall ever be again.’” The Jeremiah role was expanded through the use of other publications, such as the Watchtower magazine, booklets, and books. For example, in 1926 the book Deliverance included a powerful exposé of Christendom’s misleading teachings. On page 203 it states: “False doctrines were freely introduced [into apostate Christendom] and substituted for the truth. Amongst these were and are the doctrines of the trinity, immortality of all souls, eternal torture of the wicked, the divine right of the clergy and the divine right of kings to rule. In the course of time Mary, the mother of the child Jesus, was deified; and the people called upon to worship her as the mother of God.” Divisive Christendom Warned The same publication exposed the clergy’s complicity in wars, saying: “The clergy of these various ecclesiastical systems bless the armies which are sent out by the commercial and political wings, and their blessing is extended regardless of which side these armies are fighting on. The clergy all pretend to pray to the same God for a blessing upon the warring armies of both sides.” (Compare Jeremiah 7:31.) Then an imminent judgment was implied: “All these elements that go to make up the visible part of Satan’s organization are being gathered together and assembled for the great battle of Armageddon.”—Revelation 16:14-16. Just as in Jeremiah’s day, when the leaders said they were safe and at peace with God, “so these ecclesiastical leaders confess to themselves that they are safe, that they need only to be called by the name of Christ, while they continue to play with the Devil’s fire. They blind themselves to the real situation by putting sand into their own eyes as well as into the eyes of their fellow men.” (Deliverance, page 270) Their self-deception was exposed by those zealous Bible Students, as Jehovah’s Witnesses were then known.—Matthew 7:21-23. As time passed, the Bible Students became even more closely identified with Jeremiah when, in 1931, at a convention in Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A., it was announced that the Biblical name for this courageous group of Christians should be “Jehovah’s Witnesses.” (Isaiah 43:10-12) That name had been brought to the fore in the eighth century B.C.E. when Jehovah applied it to Israel. Hence, about a hundred years later, when Jeremiah served as a prophet, he was also a witness for Jehovah. (Jeremiah 16:21) Likewise Jesus, when he came to the earth as a Jew, was a witness for his Father, Jehovah. (John 17:25, 26; Revelation 1:5; 3:14) Therefore, it was appropriate that at God’s due time, his people should finally qualify for this divinely appointed name—“Jehovah’s Witnesses.”—John 17:6, 11, 12. Christendom Unmasked Over the last seven decades, in conjunction with proclaiming the glorious hope of Jehovah’s incoming Kingdom, Jehovah’s Witnesses have spread around the world a veritable flood of denunciation and judgment. In hundreds of millions of frank, hard-hitting Bible-based publications, they have exposed Christendom as the most powerful force in the religious whore, “Babylon the Great,” denounced in Revelation chapters 17 and 18. (See “Babylon the Great Has Fallen!” God’s Kingdom Rules!, pages 576-615, published in 1963 by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc.) In 1955 Jehovah’s Witnesses distributed millions of copies of the booklet Christendom or Christianity—Which One Is “the Light of the World”? Thousands were delivered directly to the clergy of Christendom. And what did that booklet tell them? In true Jeremiah fashion, it stated: “Despite all her advantages that have pushed her ahead economically, mentally and militarily, Christendom has not proved herself ‘the light of the world.’ Why not? . . . She does not preach or practice [the Bible’s] Christianity.” Then it raised the question: “Is the exposing of false religions a persecution of their adherents? Is it un-Christian bigotry?” The answer was: “No; otherwise Jesus Christ was a bigoted persecutor of the Jews, . . . and all of Jehovah’s prophets of ancient times [including Jeremiah] before Jesus were persecutors and bigots, for they all exposed the false religion of apostate Jews and of the heathen nations.” Certainly, if true Christians are to be “the light of the world,” then spiritual “darkness” must be exposed. (2 Corinthians 6:14-17) This does not mean that individuals are attacked but, rather, the system that enslaves them. Thus, Jehovah gave the command to Jeremiah: “You should gird up your hips, and you must rise up and speak to them everything that I myself command you. Do not be struck with any terror because of them . . . And they will be certain to fight against you, but they will not prevail against you, for ‘I am with you,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘to deliver you.’”—Jeremiah 1:17, 19. The Jeremiah Work Coming to Completion Have Jehovah’s Witnesses toned down God’s judgment? True, we live in an age when criticizing another religion is not considered the thing to do. Nevertheless, Jehovah’s Witnesses’ publications are spelling out the same message of judgment for Christendom as always. For example, in the last four years Jehovah’s Witnesses have printed 32 million copies of the book You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth, in 76 languages. This publication presents the answers to many current questions, such as “What Happens at Death?” “Why Has God Permitted Wickedness?” and “Identifying the True Religion.” But it also gives a clear warning regarding the world empire of false religion. In chapter 25, entitled “For Satan’s World, or for God’s New System?” it states: “In the Bible false religion is represented as a ‘great harlot,’ or prostitute, with the name ‘Babylon the Great.’ . . . And it is a fact that throughout history religion has been mixed up with politics, often telling governments what to do.” Therefore, what course of action does the book recommend? It asks: “Do you want to be part of Satan’s world? Or are you for God’s new system? If you are for God’s new system, you will be separate from the world, including its false religion. You will heed the command: ‘Get out of her [Babylon the Great], my people.’ (Revelation 18:4)” This same powerful message of separation and judgment rings clear in the book Worldwide Security Under the “Prince of Peace,” published in 1986 (six million copies in 25 languages). It exposes the clergy of Christendom for ‘preaching the young men into the battlefields’ of World War I. It continues: “Christendom carries on as an enemy of the Most High God down to this very time. Certainly she does not have divine protection, and for this vital reason her very existence remains insecure.” (See pages 30-2.) The voice of the modern Jeremiah is not muted! While efforts are made by clergy and politicians to stifle the preaching of God’s judgments, his faithful witnesses press on, determined to complete the warning work.—Jeremiah 18:18. And why must this work be completed? Because Jehovah, the living Sovereign Lord of the universe, has an accounting with the nations and their religions. Even as Jehovah asked deceptive Judah and Jerusalem, so the question applies equally to Christendom today: “‘Should I not take an accounting because of these very things?’ is the utterance of Jehovah. ‘Or upon a nation that is like this should not my soul avenge itself?’” Therefore, Jehovah’s Witnesses will continue to visit the people of the nations with a message that stings the majority as an unpopular judgment but is happifying good news for a minority—the good news of God’s Kingdom.—Jeremiah 5:9, 29; 9:9; Acts 8:4, 12.
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#1. To: richard9151 (#0)
When are you going to quit the blasphemy? The Jehovah Witness Cult Why did Jehovah's Witnesses pay the largest cash settlement in its history? www.cultnews.com/archives/000043.html www.fishthe.net/pages/Dis...Cults/Jehovahs_Witnesses/ Early Warning Signs of Jehovah's Witness Involvement If any of the above proves to be the case, take swift action -- that very moment! You will need to go to a Christian bookstore and obtain "opposing literature" written against the Jehovah's Witnesses. You must read it and get your loved one to read it. One that helped me was a workbook entitled "Question for Jehovah's Witnesses Who Love the Truth" by Bill Cetnar available at Personal Freedom Outreach. This shows photocopies of Watchtower mistakes, false prophesies, vacillating back and forth between doctrines, and outright lunacy. In fact, the PFO web site -- www.pfo.org has many good materials to reach JWs. Remember, the point is to undermine the Watchtower Society and shake your loved one's faith in the Society and not to argue doctrine. If you can prove to them that the Watchtower Society is not who they make themselves out to be ("God's Channel of Communication on earth") and there is no way God could even be remotely using them, then you have basically won the battle. But time is of the essence. How so? If your loved has begun studying with the JWs -- depending on how far or how long they have been studying -- will determine the measure of success you will have in squashing their involvement. JWs use a Watchtower book to indoctrinate people calling it a "Bible" study. They visit once a week for one hour and study one chapter in the book. In the study books of the past, usually by chapter 3 (the third study), the indoctrinee is taught that "Satan the Devil would use loved ones to try to stop their involvement with the only true faith on the earth today…the Jehovah's Witnesses." If they get to that point, things will be looking very grim (see the section on this web site: "The True Religion Syndrome"). If your loved one has been attending meetings (even for the first or second time) then chances are it's too late to pull him/her out of the cult because if they go through the bother of preparing for and attending meetings that means they are far along into their indoctrination and now have decided that "this is the Truth". Using coersion will only serve to reinforce that the Devil is using loved ones to try to stop their involvement in the "true faith" and will cause him or her to dig their heels more deeply into the cult. If your loved one is becoming more and more involved in the Jehovah's Witnesses then you need to use tact and creativity in reaching them. One effective method is to jointly research other religious groups such as the Mormons or the Moonies. If you take this approach your loved one's guard will be down and not on the defensive since you are not researching the JWs. However, the groups are similar in the way members are controlled and he/she will actually be able to identify with it deep within. I would suggest going to a Christian bookstore and renting the following video: www.cephas-library.com/jw...mptons_jw_involement.html Christian Books on how to avoid and that speak the truth about JW Cult.
You are so correct, Mary was the mother of the son of god, also her mother was named Mary. So many people of the world get Jesus confused with God. All through the Bible, Jesus prayed to the Father for every thing he asked. It also might seem strange that the Nuns of the Catholic Church were originally known as, The Mary's of the Church, coincidence in the names??? Maybe. As for a Virgin birth-- Now is the time to read "Earths Forbidden Secrets" At http://www.thecrowhouse.com This is an excellent story that fits Archalogical history of man kind around the world for about 400,000 years, This is a MUST READ. It may change some of your Ideas.
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