- Get link
- X
- Other Apps
And why it doesn't matter what Obama said...
On February 5, 2015 Obama gave an address at the National Prayer Breakfast. He said of people who seek to "hijack religious for their own murderous ends",
Even reformed pastor-blogger Tim Challies linked to Professor of Medieval History Thomas Madden's piece, in which Madden said both the Crusades and the Inquisition
Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission said Obama’s words were “an unfortunate attempt at a wrongheaded moral comparison,” He continued, “The evil actions that he mentioned were clearly outside the moral parameters of Christianity itself.”
That's because the evil actions that happened in the Crusades and the Inquisition were not part of Christianity at all. In a CNN interview discussing Obama's remarks, Russell Moore took issue with Obama's statement solely on the front of its moral equivalency, saying it was wrong to compare ISIS with Christianity, and it would be the same as if Roosevelt had stood up and said "Pearl Harbor was a day that will live in infamy, except let's remember we surprised the British at Yorktown too."
All of this is moot. Wrong. Of no consequence. It. does. not. matter. Why? Of the reactions I've read from both political leaders and religious leaders, none have stated the obvious. The Crusades and the Inquisition were Catholic events. The Catholic popes started them and Catholics carried them out.
Catholics are not Christians. The First Crusade was Papal response to Muslim aggression, especially the first crusade which sought to retake Jerusalem from Muslim hands. The First Crusade was followed by the Second to the Ninth Crusades. In all cases, the Catholic popes' thrust was to forcibly defend against Muslim invasion. The Catholic popes have the Inquisition on their hands also.
Catholics follow a false god and their doctrine is not the saving doctrine of Jesus' Christianity.
Catholic dogma is not of Jesus and is in fact of satan, just as the Muslim dogma is.
The worst comparison Obama made in his speech was not Christianity to ISIS, but Catholicism to Christianity. If people would take issue with THAT, it would really be doing something for the name of Jesus.
 |
| The Battle of Ager Sanguinis, medieval miniature |
"Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ."There was enormous outcry over Obama's likening of Christianity to terrorist Muslims. There have been many Op-Ed pieces, reaction articles, and blogs published over it.
Even reformed pastor-blogger Tim Challies linked to Professor of Medieval History Thomas Madden's piece, in which Madden said both the Crusades and the Inquisition
"were initiated by popes, the unquestioned leaders of Western Christianity."Kings and popes. Professor Madden set forth a response placing the Crusades in historical context as part of Christianity. Madden said the first Crusade was called in 1095 by Pope Urban II. Remember, Tim Challies linked to the piece in his daily A La Carte segment.
Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission said Obama’s words were “an unfortunate attempt at a wrongheaded moral comparison,” He continued, “The evil actions that he mentioned were clearly outside the moral parameters of Christianity itself.”
That's because the evil actions that happened in the Crusades and the Inquisition were not part of Christianity at all. In a CNN interview discussing Obama's remarks, Russell Moore took issue with Obama's statement solely on the front of its moral equivalency, saying it was wrong to compare ISIS with Christianity, and it would be the same as if Roosevelt had stood up and said "Pearl Harbor was a day that will live in infamy, except let's remember we surprised the British at Yorktown too."
 |
| A 19th-century depiction of Galileo before the Holy Office, by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury |
All of this is moot. Wrong. Of no consequence. It. does. not. matter. Why? Of the reactions I've read from both political leaders and religious leaders, none have stated the obvious. The Crusades and the Inquisition were Catholic events. The Catholic popes started them and Catholics carried them out.
Catholics are not Christians. The First Crusade was Papal response to Muslim aggression, especially the first crusade which sought to retake Jerusalem from Muslim hands. The First Crusade was followed by the Second to the Ninth Crusades. In all cases, the Catholic popes' thrust was to forcibly defend against Muslim invasion. The Catholic popes have the Inquisition on their hands also.
Catholics follow a false god and their doctrine is not the saving doctrine of Jesus' Christianity.
Catholic dogma is not of Jesus and is in fact of satan, just as the Muslim dogma is.
The worst comparison Obama made in his speech was not Christianity to ISIS, but Catholicism to Christianity. If people would take issue with THAT, it would really be doing something for the name of Jesus.
I'm so glad someone said something about this. I watched a discussion on PBS Newshour regarding Obama's comments linking the inquisition and crusades with Christianity. Of course no distinction was made between Christianity and Catholicism. It's also not surprising that Russell Moore wouldn't make the clear distinction either considering he was called home to Mama Rome along with the Pope's servant Rick Warren (both are SBC) to discuss "traditional marriage." The controlled media and these fake pastors make me absolutely sick. Thank you for exposing this!
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome. I'm a little miffed by the resounding silence that no one makes clear the fact that Christianity is not Catholicism.
DeleteAnd also by default this false church and her daughter the who came out of her is destined to encompass those who deny the Word who is Christ.
ReplyDelete2 Thessalonians 2:10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
If you really want to see how it has been done, look at the tradition that has been brought in by way of catholicism, and utterly embraced by "evangelical christians" everywhere.
Also the reason for silence is sin.
The fact that the Catholic church was behind the crusades and that Catholicism is not Christianity, is the first thing I blurted out to my husband when we heard what Obama said. Good post, Elizabeth.
ReplyDeleteJennifer
Here is a little more about Thomas Madden. As for the Inquisition, there were several, spanning the 12th and 13th centuries, including some that were secular in nature. In 1998, the Vatican granted 30 scholars access to the archives of the Holy Office, the modern successor to the Inquisition. These scholars produced an 800-page report concluding the barbarism attributed to them was vastly overstated. "The Inquisition was not born out of desire to crush diversity or oppress people; it was rather an attempt to stop unjust executions," notes historian Thomas F. Madden. Also ,Elizabeth , Did you hear the testimony of Darrel Waltrip right before Obama's speech? Not a word of it was reported.
ReplyDeleteYes, I read Prof. Madden's papers and I read of the 800 page research too. I have also read Foxe's Book of Martyrs, in which the barbarism rendered by the Catholic Church upon Christian believers even from the vantage point of 1000 years later is too difficult for me to read. I also read Pope Paul IIs official Vatican apology for the Church's unjust execution of its own Jan Hus (Martin Luther's inspiration). I read where Prof Madden said that when the results of the research from the Vatican's papers was concluded, the audience broke out in guffaws.
DeleteThe secular media will never positively publish or report in a Christian. So I'm not surprised I never heard his testimony...
As for sending me the link to Madden's piece, you don't need to do that. The link is already in the article. It's up above.
It is utterly amazing to me to see someone else finally saying what I've been saying for years now. How soon many Christians forget that Catholicism martyred OUR spiritual forefathers as well. Every time I hear someone "venerate" Mary, talk about the preference of "true Catholics" to "other Christians" or any other demonic, idolatrous Catholic garbage I just want to puke. Just like with Islam, we love the Catholic or Muslim, but I HATE their religious systems. How many people will die and go to hell because they were raised Catholic and do not know Jesus? How many will die and go to hell because they were born in a place where they were FORCED to be a Muslim? It grieves my heart immensely.
ReplyDeleteThe major reasons for the Crusades were politically and militarily justifiable. Muslims were murdering European pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem, and, most proximately, were about to conquer the Byzantine Empire, which would have led to a European Caliphate if the aggression was not repulsed. Important historical events like the Renaissance, Reformation, colonization of America, etc, would have been inexorably altered. You can certainly see God's sovereignty in how He moves nations, with regard to the East-West violence throughout the centuries when Islam has waxed expansionist.
ReplyDeleteBut this is utterly irrelevant to theology. The Crusades were military and political endeavors, called by a political power -- the RCC at that time considered itself the "Holy Roman Empire" and was far more like a nation-state than a religion -- and of course, the religion of the day was a heretical works-based system, where soldiers were promised forgiveness of sins and eternal rewards for fighting for the Pope.
The Roman Catholic church that fought the Crusades had (and still has) more in common with the Caliphate, than with Biblical Christianity. Both muslims and catholics serve human authorities who wield political, economic, and military power in the service of a hellish false religion.
Perhaps more poignantly, Obama has more in common with those systems himself than he does with the Christianity he reviles.
Don't worry, not one person that Jesus died for whose name was written in the Lambs Book of Life before the foundation will be lost!! Our God is sovreign and in control.
ReplyDeleteAmen?
Forgot to sign!
ReplyDeletePam
Before foundation of the world.
ReplyDeleteinteresting. I can't say all Catholics are not Christians, because some of them definitely have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. They may have worked through the dogma and found it or in spite of it.
ReplyDeleteIf they have a personal relationship with Christ the Holy Spirit would not allow them to remain in Catholicism, since Catholicism is false and the Spirit points to Jesus, who is Truth.
DeleteIf they become born again, they leave Catholicism almost immediately. If they don't, they're not saved.
I grew up catholic and I never had one protestant envangelical or baptist preach the gospel to me ,EVER. So it seems like your all full of pride and possibly hypocritical..
ReplyDeleteAre you in front of the mass every sunday preaching the true gospel...
But I did have a protestant landlord who was a deacon in his church; say that if I believed in Jesus (which I did)(though I'm sure you would consider it another Jesus);I would be happy that he made me and everyone in the building sick by lying to us and telling us our water was good when in fact it had hugh counts of sewage in it(considered unbathable by the state).He has never repented and my health has never been the same..I truly feel he ruined my health..
Really, I like and respect your site to a degree; but I honestly have met a lot of catholics that have the fruits of the holy spirit..So, you seem or come across kind of arrogant,respectfully..
Though I agree catholisism has a lot of heresy.. But it seems that is in most churches today..
Hello Anonymous Catholic,
DeleteI am truly, TRULY sorry no one ever preached the Gospel to you, a lost person, and never told you what it takes to be saved.
It is not arrogant to tell you of The Way, which is the only way to heaven. That there is a way at all is a miracle of love from our Holy God. Thank our Lord that there is one! But there is only one way and that between the Protestants and the Catholics each describe a way which diametrically oppose means one of them is wrong.
No Catholic who accepts the dogmas of Rome has the Holy Spirit. Mother Theresa did not have the Holy Spirit and is in hell now. How do I know? She accepted Rome's dogmas and also accepted other religions. Yet Jesus said he is THE Way and the Truth and the Life.
What other people who SEEM to have in SEEMING to bear fruit is an external morality. However Jesus called the whitewashed tombs, painted over graves concealing dead people.
Some of these dogmas of the Catholic Church which do not appear in the bible are: Apostolic Tradition, The Mass, Popehood, Popish Infalibility, Penance, Veneration of Mary, Purgatory, Indulgences, the Priesthood, the Confessional, the Rosary, Venial and Mortal Sins, and some of the statues in the Church.
Anonymous, This page explains the differences between Biblical truth and false Catholicism. Are you too arrogant to check it out? :)
https://carm.org/why-it-necessary-write-about-roman-catholicism
Elizabeth - I do not consider myself catholic anymore nor do I think the pope, purgatory ,indugences ,etc. is biblical.. So, I don't need to look it up..But I still believe that individual catholics can have the fruits of the Holy Spirit; which are love ,peace, joy, longsuffering etc.;and not be whitewashed tombs.. Jesus was talking to certain pharisees not every one of them, because they had an outward holiness. But these people I have know have an inward true holiness ,so I disagree.. So have you know any catholics very well? Like as relatives?Or for years? Should we be judging other peoples salvation? Isn't that God's job.. And before you jump to conclusions ,I am not one of those people who think's we can't judge anyone..
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your saying sorry that no one preached the gospel to me; but the fact of the matter is that the only people who go door to door or are on the streets are the Jehovah witnesses. What does that say about the envangelical church?. You go halfway round the world, but leave people in your own towns without the true gospel...
And what about the protestant deacon who refuses to repent and acknowledge he lied and made people very ill? You have not said anything about him?
I was also in a group with a fundamentalist baptist woman and I saw almost no fruits of the holy spirit in her; but your saying she more likely has eternal life than these other people because she's in the right church and professes the right thing. Maybe she's the whitewashed tomb. I guess when we meet Jesus Christ we will know..
Jesus also said "If you love me keep my commandments". That seems really important....
Thank- you for your reply and peace to you - Sue
Hi sue,
ReplyDeleteYou disagree, saying "But these people I have know have an inward true holiness"
What gives them that true holiness? Where does it come from?
PS I am not saying nor have I EVER said that just because one is in a certain church they are saved. What I say and ALWAYS have said is that one must believe the purer Gospel and not have added anything to it in order to believe.
PPS we are not judging others' salvation, but their doctrine. If someone does not believe the Gospel and adds anything else to it or takes away form it, they are not saved. The bible declares this, not me.
OK, so if the major dogmas of the Catholic Church are unbiblical as you say, yet an "individual Catholic" believes them, you still maintain they can display fruits of the Spirit? Nope.
DeleteAlternately, if an individual Catholic has the Spirit, He will quickly remove them from the blasphemous environment in which they dwell, because the Spirit always points to Christ. And since it takes time for fruit to grow and show, if they are displaying fruit it is not of the Spirit. Any person with the Spirit will not identify as Catholic by the time they begin to show true fruit.
Flesh can do good works and masquerade as godliness but still deny its power. (I mixed in two verses there:) I hope you see that you have contradicted yourself and your position is illogical, untenable, and unbiblical...I say this with no malice but in all loving truth.