By Ian Paisley
Brethren, today we mark the joyous occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of that day on which Martin Luther introduced his fateful Ninety-Five Theses to the Church of Rome in Wittenberg, Germany. He started a great movement that continues to this day. However, modern times are getting darker and darker, and it seems that we are no longer in a revival period. It is a sure thing that God will bring about another revival.† However, we must be its cutting edge.
In today’s America, everyone believes that there is some great malevolent force that is threatening our way of life. However, these opinions are diverse, and often fail to strike at the hearts of our problems. For example, many Americans wave their hands in panic at the supposed Mohammedan takeover of America. There are legitimate reasons to hold this fear, for the Moslems deny the blessed Son of God. However, friends, I must warn you that there is a far greater threat to our American way of life than Mohammedanism. When American Christians speak in fear of Mohammedan takeover of our society, and increasing Mohammedan numbers, and Mohammedan subversion of American values, they often fail to realize that they are averting their gaze from an even bigger threat, which can be spoken of in the same terms. And that threat, I want to tell you friends, is the threat that is Romanism. Romanism is apostasy. It is false religion. Romish stances, Romish schoolings, and Romish sacraments are all Satanic subversions of the path that has been laid by Jesus Christ.† According to Pew research data from 2014, Muslims make up 0.9% of the American population, while the followers of the Church of Rome make up 20.8%. There are almost twice as many Mormons as Moslems. However, Christianity in the United States is in a fierce struggle for survival. It is assaulted on all sides and from all generations, by secular media, by unrighteous people, by higher criticism, by socialism, atheism, and progressivism, by Romish propaganda, and worst of all, by the apostatizing of so-called Protestant denominations all over this country. Friends, the Church of Rome is a much greater threat to America than Islam ever was. We have had a Catholic president. We have Catholics in the White House. And don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with individual Catholics as people, nor do many of them have any problem with me, because this is America, where the First Amendment guarantees people’s rights to speak as firmly as they’d like about their opposing religious convictions—and we are all brothers united by our common nationality, Protestant or Catholic, in our struggle to keep America free. But in the battle for souls, Popery has to be fought with all our hearts, and that means striking with sharp tongue at the Satanic apostasy, irrespective of where it be found.
Romanism denies the foundation laid by Jesus Christ. For hundreds of years, the Church of Rome has cast the Bible aside and replaced it with priestly worship. The term ‘Protestant fundamentalist’ calls to mind the image of a man or woman of God, relying on the Bible as the foundation, and not relying on anything else whatsoever. No faith in idolatry, no faith in sacraments, and no faith in the tricks of the Devil. But what is a Catholic fundamentalist? A Catholic fundamentalist is one who relies absolutely on the word of the Pope! Who has absolute faith in the saving power of sacraments, and absolute faith in the papal infallibility, and absolute faith that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ! Brethren, this is not true Christianity. There is no mediator between Christ and Man. The Pope, currently Mr. Bergoglio, claims to be Christ’s representative on Earth. He claims to be the ‘Vicar of Christ’—a replacement for Christ. My friends, did you know that, when translated into Greek, this title, according to the European Institute of Protestant Studies, literally means ‘anti-Christ’? There are millions of Roman Catholics in Hell because they followed the Pope!† You’re not saved by sacraments! You’re not saved by indulgences! You’re not saved by priests! You’re not saved by good deeds! You are saved only by Jesus Christ, who died for our sins, and thank God that no Pope can take that away from us!† Turning for salvation to anything other than Jesus Christ, whether it be holy candles or holy beads, or the Virgin Mary or good deeds, is apostasy! I do not believe that all Catholics go to Hell. Quite the contrary. I want to tell you, the faith in Jesus Christ held by many Roman Catholics in addition to their faith in ungodly things is often sincere. However, the Church of Rome is the foremost purveyor of apostasy and degradation of the faith, in all the world. Priests are deceivers. The Church of Rome teaches that a priest can summon Jesus Christ down from Heaven at will in order to reincarnate Him as a wafer. The Church of Rome teaches that the Virgin Mary has saving power. The Church of Rome teaches that priests have the ability to forgive sins, and that without the priest, the soul is lost. We need to take a strong stand against the Scarlet Harlot and her perversions, and we need to take a strong stand against the Romanizing, apostatizing secularists and ecumenists who are disemboweling their Protestant faith and handing America over to Rome. There are many Presbyterian ministers in America today who preach that Jesus Christ loves homosexuality! There are many who believe that the Bible is not the word of God! How, O, how many believe that people without faith in Jesus Christ can enter Heaven, just because they did good deeds?
Now let me come to the main part of my sermon today. I have read a Binghamton Review op-ed by a man named Luke Kusick, entitled “Protestants Are the Real Liberals”. This article is a breath from Satan. It claims that Martin Luther was an arch-heretic and that Protestants are liberals because they have abandoned priestly worship and therefore accept no authority. This is absolutely false. Protestants do accept an authority, and no other authority, and that authority is Jesus Christ. And in the Bible, it says “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 3:11).† A Christian should have no foundation other than Jesus Christ. Now let me quote to you some sentences from Mr. Kusick’s article. “At the time of the Reformation, religion and politics were intertwined; therefore, an attack on the Church was an attack on the very government as well.” He describes the Church of Rome approvingly as being the government of Christians. He also says about Martin Luther: “Evidentially, instead of trying to reform or attack corruption from within, he began to attack the very nature of the Church.” But the very nature of the Church was corrupt, and one can only fix that by being outside of it. You don’t defeat the Devil by joining hand in hand with him and trying to softly convince him of the error of his ways! You defeat him, by waging the Lord’s battle against him and his crowd! Call him out! Reject him! And go not into his midst, lest ye become one of his! Mr. Kusick says further: “the Catholic and Orthodox Church believe to this day that it is through Faith and sacred Tradition that one finds himself saved… Attacking tradition is an attack on the social order, so sola scriptura, which means scripture alone, means that tradition has no place in one’s faith.” That’s what he says. But Romish traditions are often medieval or even more modern! Let me read to you briefly an excerpt on the Rosary from the European Institute of Protestant Studies:
The Rosary is an arithmetical guide to Romish devotion of comparatively modern use in the Roman Church. It is a string of beads larger and smaller designed to aid the worshipper in repeating a definite number of Paternosters (Our Fathers) and Ave Marias (Hail Marys). There are as many as twenty forms of Rosary devotions enumerated by standard authorities. The most ordinary form has five decades (or tens) of smaller beads making in all fifty each decade separated by a single large bead making in all five. The arrangement is that for every one of the fifty smaller beads the Romanist offers up a prayer to Mary, the Ave Maria, and for every one of the larger ones he offers up a prayer to God, the Lord’s Prayer. In other words, the Romanist is taught to pray ten times to Mary for every one that he prays to God.
There are many, many other examples like this. Let me hasten to add that the liberal Protestant denominations in America today are jelly-legged travesties, and their own invented traditions are a disaster for our way of life.
So, for Mr. Kusick to claim that conservative Bible-based Protestant Christianity is liberal and opposed to authority is flagrantly false. The Church of Rome teaches diversion from Jesus Christ’s authority, reliance on idols such as mariolatry, and medieval innovations such as purgatory—not at all mentioned in the Bible—in which the souls of the living can supposedly hasten the salvation of the souls of the dead through prayer. The Church of Rome also, in today’s world, preaches the adoption of attitudes soft on sodomy, and soft on other Satanic heresies and apostasies, such as Islam, Judaism, and apostatized Protestantism. The morals that bind our righteous society together need to be upheld. We do not hate anyone for being Catholic, and we want to convert as many souls as possible to Christianity, so that they may enjoy everlasting Paradise. As the most populous Protestant country in the world, we must reject all the Devil’s attacks on the infallibility and immaculacy of our beloved Savior, and, thank God, He will lead us into His eternal light.
I would like to finish my sermon today with a few words of thanks to the Protestant men and women in the United States and the United Kingdom, who have done more than anyone else to spread the faith around the world. Not only does this year mark the fifth centenary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, but it marks also the Sapphire Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Defender of the Faith. As Americans, we thank her and her husband the Duke of Edinburgh for maintaining Protestantism in her country. Long may she reign, and God bless America.
Sources:
Wormald, Benjamin. “America’s Changing Religious Landscape.” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, Pew Research Center, 11 May 2015, www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/.
King James Bible. This is God’s word! It is not the word of Man!
Kusick, Luke. “Protestants Are the Real Liberals.” Binghamton Review, 27 Sept. 2017, pp. 10–11.
Paisley, Rev. Dr. Ian R. K., Sr. MP MEP. “Mariolatry 178. What Is the Rosary?” A Concise Guide to Bible Christianity and Romanism, 1991, www.archive.is/JlmHN.