In today’s world,
filled with thousands of sects claiming to be Christian, we hear these non-Christians
say that the Bible is the ONLY source of Faith for Christians. Their usual
refrain is ‘Is it in the Bible?’ or ‘The Bible says’, ‘where is it in the
bible’ etc. Although the Bible is the Inspired Word of God, placing the Bible
above the Church is the Devil’s secret weapon for destroying people’s souls in
hell, for all eternity!
The Bible itself told
us that the Church is the ‘Bulwark and Pillar of the truth’(1 Timothy 3:15).
What is the meaning of the word ‘Church’ in this passage? It means the Catholic
Church! While these letters were written, there was only ONE Church in existence
which everyone acknowledge to be the Church of Christ, called the Catholic Church.
This is a historical fact!
But those deceived by
the Devil does not think that history is anything to go by. They will ask,
‘Show me where that is in the bible’ and because the bible is not just a book
of history, you will not see the word ‘Catholic Church’ there and so these deceived
dismiss this truth.
They will then secretly,
assess the situation in the world and suggest that everyone calling the name ‘Christ’
is a Church! In other words, because they cannot find a single Church that can
represent the words ‘bulwark and pillar of truth’, they reason that it is all
persons calling ‘ Christ’ that is the church and so the Church means those who
read the bible as the ONLY source of faith and so the bible is the ONLY truth
of faith. Once a piece of belief is NOT literally in the bible, they dismiss
it!
That is the Devil
working in people’s lives preparing them for the fires of hell!
The Church has the
authority from God to teach regarding faith and morals and in her teaching she
is preserved from error by the special guidance of the Holy Ghost. This means
that since the Holy Ghost is infallible, then the Church MUST be infallible in
as much as it is ruled by the Holy Ghost!
This infallibility of
the Church is FULLY acknowledged by the Apostles (See Gal 4:14), 1Thess 2: 13).
The apostles were the ONLY authority in preaching and interpreting the word of
God in the early Church. The New Testament was not completed till around 100
years after Christ and when it was completed, the Christians did not know about
anything called ‘The New testament’.
Only a few lay people
knew about the New Testament documents when they were completed in a scattered
manner in many territories. So it is impossible to say that the bible is the
only authority in the Church. The Apostles transmitted to their successors
their power to preach, to baptize, to ordain (as they ordained Matthias), to
confirm, etc. They also handed down the essential gift of infallibility.
It will not do when the
‘Protestants’ (‘pentecostals’) say ‘we have an infallible scripture as a
substitute for the infallible apostolate of the first century’ since an
infallible book is of no use to us without an infallible interpreter.
There must be just ONE meaning of the Bible.
Each passage must have just ONE meaning since truth is ONE and eternal. There
cannot be different equally true perspectives about the Bible! There MUST just
ONE authentically true interpretation of the bible!
But in Protestantism,
there are thousands of meanings given by each preacher as he or she starts his
or her own religion and justifies the new religion with the bible!
But no matter what anyone
believes, we have positive evidence from the Bible itself that the Catholic Church
being the ONE TRUE CHURCH established by Christ cannot err in her
teachings. Our Lord Jesus in constituting
St Peter, Prince of the Apostles said to him ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this
rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against
it’ (Mat 16: 18). Christ makes here a solemn prediction that no error shall
ever invade His Church and if She fell into error the gates of hell have
certainly prevailed against her!
The Protestant
revolutionaries of the 16 century who are erroneously called ‘reformers’ believed
that the Church has fallen in errors! So sought to start new ‘Churches’ free
from errors! This was impossible as what they started was riddled with errors
dangerous to the soul! Ask yourself: how can fallible human being start
fallible Churches? Impossible!
If the prediction of
our savior about the preservation of His Church from error be false, then Jesus
Christ is not God!
But Christ predicted
the truth when he declared that the gates of hell will not prevail against His
church.
This is one reason why
the evil religion at the Vatican is not that Church of Christ since it is
riddled with errors and heresies!
Jesus Himself never
said we should read the bible! He sent out His Apostles with powers to preach
the Gospel! ‘As the Father sent me, I also send you’ (John 20:21). He did not
send them to read the bible but to preach! ‘Go therefore, teach all nations,
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you’ (Matthew
28: 19-20). ‘Preach the Gospel to every creature’ (Mark 16:15) ‘Ye shall be
witnesses unto me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and even to the
uttermost part of the earth’ (Acts 1:8).
This commission
evidently applies to the Apostles only, but also to their successors, to the
end of time, since it was utterly impossible for the apostles to personally
preach to the whole world. Christ referring to preaching to the whole world
presupposes the coming of the apostolic successors. Read more about Apostolic
Succession here
Not only does Our Lord
empowers His Apostles to preach the Gospel, but he commands and under the most
severe penalties those whom they preach to listen and obey. ‘whosoever will not
receive you, nor hear your words, going fourth from that house or city, shake
the dust from your feet. Amen I say to you, it shall be more tolerable for the
land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Day of Judgment than for that city’ (Mat 10:
14-15).
‘If he will not hear
the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican’ (Mat 28: 17). ‘He
that believeth shall be saved, he that believeth not shall be condemned’ (Mark
16: 16). ‘He that heareth you heareth me, he that despiseth you despiseth me
and he that dispiseth me dispiseth He that sent me’ (Luke 10: 16).
From these passages we
see, on the one hand, that the Apostles and their successors have received full
power to announce the Gospel and on the other hand that their hearers are obliged
to listen with docility and to obey not merely by an external compliance but
also by an internal assent of the intellect.
Nowhere did the
passages say anything about the bible or reading of the bible! It was focused
on preaching what Christ has commanded which the Apostles knew and which they
handed down to their successors!
What
Use is the Bible?
The Church as we have seen is the ONLY
Divinely constituted teacher of revelation and NOT the Bible! The Bible is ONE
of the tools used by the Church today for preaching and the Church is NOT
limited to the bible or by the bible!
The Bible is a great
depository of the Word of God. The Church is the Divinely appointed Custodian
and interpreter of the Bible!
God NEVER intended the
Bible to be the ONLY Christian rule of faith, independently of the living
authority of the Church! Those who say that the bible is the ONLY source of the
faith are ruled by the Devil!
No nation ever had a
greater veneration for the Scriptures (Old Testament) than the Jews. The Holy
Scripture was their pride and their glory. It was their national song in time
of peace; it was their meditation and solace in time of tribulation and exile.
Yet, the Jews NEVER dreamed of settling their religious controversies by a
private appeal of the Scriptures.
Whenever any religious
dispute arose among the people it was decided by the high priest and the Sanhedrim,
which was a council consisting of 72 civil and Temple judges. The sentence of
the High priest and of his associate judges was to be obeyed under penalty of
death.
The book of
Deuteronomy, one of the principal Jewish books in the bible stated that:
‘there be among you a hard and doubtful matter
in judgment……thou shall come to the priests of the levitical race and to the
judge…..and they shall show thee the truth of the judgment…. And thou shall
follow their sentence, neither shalt thou decline to the right hand not to the
left… but he that will….refuse to obey the commandments of the priest….that man
shall die and thou shall take away the evil from Israel’! (Deut 17:8-)
From this passage, we
perceive that God does not refer the Jews for the settlement of their
controversies to the letter of the law (the scriptures), but to the living
authority of the ecclesiastical tribunal which He had expressly established for
that purpose! In other words, no Jew rushes to read the law on his own and say
‘oh I have found the answers in the scriptures’ without referring to those who legitimately
interpret and teach the right sense of the scriptures.
Hence the priests were
required to be intimately acquainted with the Scriptures because they were the
depositories of God’s law and were expounders to the people. ‘The lips of the
priest shall keep knowledge and they (the people) shall seek the law at his
mouth because he is the angel (the messenger) of the Lord of Host’. (Malachi
2:7).
Infact very few of the
Sons of Israel were in possession of the Scriptures! The scriptures were very
rare among the people!
Did Christ reverse this
when he came to the world? Does he tell the Jews to be their own guides in the
study of the scriptures? Never! He commanded them to obey the constituted
authorities, no matter how messy the private lives of the authorities are!
‘Then Jesus said to the multitude, and to His disciples: the Scribes and
Pharisees sit upon the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever that
shall say to you, observe and do’ (Matthew 23:2-3)
It is true that Our
Lord Jesus Christ said in one occasion ‘ Search the Scriptures for you think in
them to have life everlasting and the same are they that give testimony of me’
(John 5:39). This passage is triumphantly quoted by Protestants as favoring
their private and misguided reading and interpretation of the Bible. But this
passage proves nothing like that! This passage is NOT asking each individual to
read and interpret the bible on his own!
Many learned commentators
of the Bible, including some Protestants, express the verb in this passage in
indicative mood. They render is as: ‘Ye search the scriptures’. The passage was
not commanding a search of the scriptures.
Remember that our
Savior speaks here of ONLY of the Old Testament because the New Testament was
not yet written while Our Lord was here. He addresses NOT the multitude, but
the Pharisees who were the teachers of the law, condemning them for not seeing
His Divinity from the Scriptures! That passages therefore can be rendered as follows:
‘ you have the scriptures in your hands,
why then do you not recognize Me as the Messiah, since they give testimony that
I am the Son of God?’
Besides He did not rest
the proof of His Diviity ONLY on the scriptures! He showed first:
By the testimony of
John the Baptist (John 5:33) who had said ‘behold Him who taketh away the sins
of the world. (see also John 1: 34).
Second, by the miracles
which He wrought (John 5:36)
Third, by the testimony
of the Father (John 5: 37) when He said ‘This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am
well pleased, hear ye Him’ (Mat 3: 16, Luke 9:35)
So when the Lord Jesus
abolished the Old law and established His Church, The Catholic Church, did He
intend that the Gospel should be disseminated by the circulation of the Bible
or by the Living voice of his disciples? The answer is NO!
Did He intend that the
Bible be circulated as the ONLY source of what ought to be preached? The answer
is again No!
Why then are the Protestants,
claim to read the bible and insist that the Bible is the ONLY source of the
faith? We ask like them: where is it in the Bible?
Where is it in the
bible that the bible is the ONLY source of the faith?
The Protestant will go
and dishonestly quote 2 Timothy 3: 16, which says that ‘every scripture is
inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for
training in righteousness’.
Is there a way this
passage means that the bible ALONE is good to be used? No! But the Protestants
are manipulated by the Devil who fills them with dishonesty making them quote
this passage as if it confirms their Bible alone belief.
By the way, the the
word ‘scripture’ in this passage refers to the Old Testament because when Paul
wrote to Timothy, there was no New Testament. So the scripture they knew was
the Old Testament!
While Paul was writing
these words to Timothy, other people were at that time writing various things
about the faith. Infact, there were 69 Gospels and other writings calling
themselves ‘scripture’ all claiming to bear testimony to Christ!
The Catholic Church in
the plenitude of her authority as the Church established by Jesus Christ,
separated the chaff from the wheat! She, at the council of Carthage in the year
397AD, separated which books were canonical and which is apocryphal. In other
words the Catholic Church at Carthage decided which book will become part of
the Bible and which will not. She selected for instance, just 4 Gospels among
the available 69 of them!
So when the Protestants
peddle the bible claiming to know EVERYTHING about it, remind them that they
are misreading a Catholic book. They should indeed go back to learn from the
owner of the book! That is the honest thing to do!
Even after the Catholic
Church selected the books of the Bible, the books did not reach everybody. It
was a very rare collection! Only a few elite and the Monasteries had a complete
copy and Monks had to copy, with hand ALL the available copy making the Bible a
very expensive collection in the ancient Church!
If ONLY the Bible is
what we MUST consult to know the truth, it means that many millions of people
will not know the truth because they had no bibles! Those who cannot read will
perish!
The art of printing was
invented by Gutenberg in the year 1440. It was then that the circulation of the
bible improved. But no one started to say that the bible alone is what is
necessary to know the truth of faith!
Each authoritative book
must have their ONE authentic interpretation. In the USA, they have their
constitution. No person will read the constitution and claim to know for a fact
what it means in each given circumstance! No! The interpretation of the
constitution falls to the Supreme Court!
The same is true about
the Nigerian constitution. The Lawyers are specifically trained to interpret
the law and when a dispute arises, which requires final interpretation, that
prerogative falls in the laps of the Supreme Court. When the Supreme Court
makes pronouncements, all other interpretations, personal or otherwise, fall
under that of the Supreme court!
So in Christendom, it
is the Pope ( not the criminal now called Pope Francis, read more here) that has the sole authority to
determine the meaning of a particular passage in the bible! He does this though
the power of the Holy Spirit!
The Protestants have no
such single interpretation since they are ruled by the devil who furnishes them
with various and conflicting interpretations which lead to the increment of thousands
of sects all claiming to know what the bible is saying.
The Protestants also
dishonestly claim that the Catholic Church commands her faithful not to read
the bible! This is calumny for how can the owner of the Bible command people
not to read it?
There are signs everywhere
that shows that the Catholic Church commands the reading of the bible by the
faithful!
When the Church
collected the original bible, with the Old Testament in Hebrew (Aramaic) and
the New Testament in Greek, the reigning Pope, Damascane commanded a
translation of the bible into Latin so that the educated class will have access
to it since Latin was the language of the learned people!
This gigantic task fell
on St. Jerome and he set out doing this translation which was called the Vulgate or popular edition! Because of
this Latin translation, it became easy to put the bible into other languages of
Europe!
Ask yourself, why these
translations, all done by the Catholic Church?
If the Catholic Church
wished to suppress the Bible or prevent people from reading it, it could have
so easily done that. But no, She set out to have the bible in as many languages
as possible so that more people, not just Monks and priests, will have access!
It was the Catholic
saint St. Bede that translated the Bible into the Saxan languages, paving the
way for the English bible!
When the Catholic
Bishops of the United States of America translated the Bible into their own
kind of English called the Haydock Bible, the Pope then, Pope Pius VI, personally
wrote the preface commanding that all Catholics in America should read the Holy
Scriptures here translated, to be refreshed by the word of God. You know that
in the Catholic Church the command of the Pope is VERY weighty.
So the Protestant being
deceived by the Devil uses the bible in such a way that ensures that they are
damned in hell by the devil.
The Catholic Church
admonishes that the Bible be read as a spiritual
reading but cannot never be used as the only source of the truth of the faith.
No one can claim that the bible tells him or her what to do unless through the
mediation of the Catholic Church who has been mandated by Christ to preach to
all nations and which makes use of the bible as one of the sources of faith!
When a dispute arises,
the bible CANNOT be referred to, to make the final pronouncement on the matter,
that authority falls on the Church, in particular the pope!
The Pope calls people,
who have studied the bible, examining it side by side with the deposit of the
faith as was preached by the Apostles and their successors to determine the
answer to any bugging question.
Everyday, the Catholic Church
reads the bible officially at Mass and in the Divine office (the official
prayers of the Church). Each Catholic is called to read the bible with the Church
not on personal grounds! If anyone where
to claim the full knowledge of the bible without recourse to the Church, the
person is truly ruled by the devil as the Devil rules the Protestants!
Presented by Malachy
Mary Igwilo, 30th of April 2017. Second Sunday of Easter, Feast of
St. Catherine of Sienna
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