25 Questions to Stephen About Peter as the Rock

"...the attempts of the Roman Catholic hierarchy to establish its authority from Scripture are astonishingly weak...The assertion that the Roman Catholic bishops are the apostles' successors is based upon the thinnest of implications....we must conclude that the power of the Pope and bishops does not come from God." (James G. McCarthy, The Gospel According to Rome [hereafter "GAR"], page 260, 261).

1 - If Peter was assigned the position of leader of the Church why did Jesus declare emphatically: “. . . do not call anyone on earth ‘father’, for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher’, for you have one Teacher, the Christ” (Matthew 23:9, 10)?

Note: The context indicates that the reference is to the final authority vis-à-vis spiritual questions. No man can assume this role.

2 - If Peter and the disciples had understood the words of Christ in Matthew 16:18 as establishing Peter’s supremacy and leadership position, why a little later the disciples disputed who would be the greatest amongst them?

Note: They would rather be disputing the number 2 position, not the number 1, since that would have been already assured to Peter by Jesus.

3 - If Peter was the head of the Church, why wasn’t he who presented the final decision of the Jerusalem Council, but James (see Acts 15)?

Note: He only delivered an introductory speech, but James was the Christian leader who spoke on behalf of the body of apostles, which can be concluded reading carefully the entire chapter, especially verses 12ff.

4 - If Peter was the head of the Church, why was he sent by the Church to Samaria with John (see Acts 8:14)? As the No. 1 leader of the Church, he would be sending missionaries.

5 - If Peter was the head of the Church, the “rock” of its foundation, why did he himself attribute to Christ the role of the basic rock, and never claimed to himself or mentioned any special leadership role in the Church (see 1 Peter 2:6-8)?

6 - If Peter was the head of the Church, the “rock” of its foundation, why didn’t Paul confirm this in 1 Corinthians 10:4, as he assured that Christ is the rock?

7 - If Peter was the first Pope, how could Paul reprimand him so severely because he acted in a wrong way (see Galatians 2:11-14)?

Note: Nowhere in the writings of Paul does he confer any primacy to Peter whatsoever. On the contrary, when he had the opportunity to call Peter the Rock of the Church, Paul said that there's no other foundation other than Christ. I Cor 3:11.

8 - If Peter was the first Pope, why does Paul say that the Church is built on the human foundation of the apostles and prophets, without discriminating Peter as the most important of these (see Ephesians 2:20)?

Note: Christ in this text is presented again as the Church’s cornerstone.

9 - If Peter was the first Pope, why didn’t Paul discriminate Peter as the principal one, as he made reference to Peter, together with James and John as the columns of the Church (see Galatians 2:9)?

Note: He mentions James in the first place.

10 - If Peter was the first Pope, why didn’t the final authority of the Jerusalem church remain with Peter, but with the apostles, later substituted by “elders”?

Note: Besides having been “the apostles” who sent Peter to Samaria (Acts 8:14) to supervise the new Christian communities, they also did the same sending Barnabas to Antioquia (Acts 11:22), later Judas and Silas to the same place (Acts 15:22-27).

11 - If Peter was the first Pope, why were “James and the elders” the ones who recommended that Paul submitted himself to a purification rite in the Temple (Acts 21:18, 23-24)?

12 - If Peter was the first Pope, why does Paul make clear in Galatians that he did not consider Jerusalem a divinely appointed administrative center for all the congregational activity?

Note: After his conversion Paul did not go to Jerusalem, to seek guidance from Peter and the leadership of the Church there, but to Damascus.

13 - If Peter was the head of the Church, the “rock” of its foundation, why did Paul, after his conversion, receive divine instructions through a native of Damascus, called Ananias, and not through Peter?

Note: In Galatians 1: 16, 17 he says clearly that after his conversion he did not resort to any human source of authority.

14 - If Peter was the first Pope, why did Paul travel to Jerusalem only three years later and declared that he only saw Peter and James, and no other apostle in his fifteen-day sojourn there?

15 - If Peter was the head of the Church, the “rock” of its foundation, why did Paul set Antioquia as the base of his operations, and although that city was near Jerusalem he did not see a reason to address himself to the capital of the Judea.

16 - If Peter was the first Pope, why don’t the stories of Paul’s missionary trips ever indicate that he undertook them under the recommendation of any “administrative board”, and with a route and a budget duly approved by an ecclesiastical leader (Acts 13, 15, 20, etc.--especially 15:36)?

17 - If Peter was head of the Church, the “rock” of its foundation, why did Paul go back up to Jerusalem only after fourteen years, accompanied by Barnabas and Titus and not Peter, and that because he had a “revelation” from the Lord (see Gal. 2: 1, 2)?

18 - If Peter was the first Pope, why the only Biblical manuscripts after the fall of Jerusalem, from the apostle John, written decades after the desolation of Jerusalem, don’t ever mention any Church leader [or Pope] or Christian administrative center in his days, having a Peter as the top leader?

19 - If Peter was the head of the Church, the “rock” of its foundation, why does John in the book of Revelation, portray Christ as sending messages to the seven churches of Asia Minor, not any Pope (Rev. 1 to 3), and in none of these messages is there any suggestion or indication that those congregations were under an external direction, but that of Christ Himself?

20 - If Peter was the first Pope, why, in the available writings of Christian authors from the second and third centuries, nothing is indicated regarding the existence of a centered administration to supervise the numerous Christian congregations, under the command of Peter?

Note: The history of the period discloses, in contrast, something much different--that the centered religious authority was the product of a post-apostolic and post-Biblical development.

21 - If Peter was the Rock, why didn't Jesus plainly say, 'UPON YOU', will I build my Church?

Note: Obviously because Jesus was referring to another Rock, the truth that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God. He was obviously contrasting the character of Peter as expressed in the Gospels with the solid and unshakeable rock of Jesus.

22 - If Peter was a solid Rock, why did Jesus severely rebuke him shortly after? Matthew 16:22-23

Note: Jesus rebuked Satan who was speaking through Peter. So, if Peter had just been considered by Jesus as a 'rock', how could he have become so quickly an instrument of Satan?If Jesus had just established Peter as the foundation of the Church, this episode would clearly demonstrate that Jesus made a gross mistake, which is of course, absurd. Therefore, rock CANNOT be referring to Peter.

23 - If Peter was the Rock, why didn't Jesus commission Peter to build his church, instead of saying I WILL BUILD my church?

Note: Jesus is the builder and maker of the church and its foundation. "For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." I Cor. 3: 11.

24. If Jesus' statement in Matthew 16 was so important to the establishment of the Church, why do all the other Gospel omit these words altogether?

Note: If all we had were the other 3 Gospels, the Catholic Church would not have ANY biblical basis for their Papacy. But then again, the Catholic hierarchy DOES NOT need the Scriptures to invent new dogmas, they resort to their own tradition to supplant the Scriptures.

25. If Peter was the solid rock, what does his denial of Christ reveal about Peter's total inability to be the foundation of anything?

Note: Apparently, Peter continued to show his unstableness as a sinner long after that night of denial, and had to be confronted by Paul because he was changing his approach to please different groups of converts. (See Galatians 2:11-14 for full account.)

___________________________

Since Peter was not the rock has been clearly demonstrated here, Jesus' statement "I will give you the keys of the kingdom" cannot refer to Peter either. Rather, Jesus says this again to all his disciples in Matthew 18:18 as the Church that Jesus HIMSELF would build. Because Peter had no primacy in the foundation and establishment of the Church in the early Church, the Papacy does not follow any so-called "line of apostles" after Peter and therefore their arrogance of the title of the Church that Peter built is based on a fallacy.

Furthermore, because the history of the Roman Catholicism clearly demonstrates how it has dishonored the name of Christ by replacing the true Gospel with its own saving rituals and false beliefs, claiming the Bible is insufficient to instruct in righteousness, persecuting those who would hold the Scriptures as their only norm of faith, claiming the Pope is God on earth, the Roman Catholic Church and its false system should here be interpreted as the "gates of hell", who stand in direct opposition to the true Church of Christ, those who have "kept the commandments and have the faith of Jesus" (Rev. 14:12) in all centuries, all over the world.

We urge our sincere and faithful Catholic brethren who love Christ and find themselves inside the Roman Catholic Church to heed the invitation of Christ in Revelation: "And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, MY PEOPLE, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." Rev. 18:4.

"But in vain they do worship me, teaching [for] doctrines the commandments of men." Mat 15:9:

25 Questions to Stephen About Peter as the Rock

"...the attempts of the Roman Catholic hierarchy to establish its authority from Scripture are astonishingly weak...The assertion that the Roman Catholic bishops are the apostles' successors is based upon the thinnest of implications....we must conclude that the power of the Pope and bishops does not come from God." (James G. McCarthy, The Gospel According to Rome [hereafter "GAR"], page 260, 261).

1 - If Peter was assigned the position of leader of the Church why did Jesus declare emphatically: “. . . do not call anyone on earth ‘father’, for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher’, for you have one Teacher, the Christ” (Matthew 23:9, 10)?

Note: The context indicates that the reference is to the final authority vis-à-vis spiritual questions. No man can assume this role.

2 - If Peter and the disciples had understood the words of Christ in Matthew 16:18 as establishing Peter’s supremacy and leadership position, why a little later the disciples disputed who would be the greatest amongst them?

Note: They would rather be disputing the number 2 position, not the number 1, since that would have been already assured to Peter by Jesus.

3 - If Peter was the head of the Church, why wasn’t he who presented the final decision of the Jerusalem Council, but James (see Acts 15)?

Note: He only delivered an introductory speech, but James was the Christian leader who spoke on behalf of the body of apostles, which can be concluded reading carefully the entire chapter, especially verses 12ff.

4 - If Peter was the head of the Church, why was he sent by the Church to Samaria with John (see Acts 8:14)? As the No. 1 leader of the Church, he would be sending missionaries.

5 - If Peter was the head of the Church, the “rock” of its foundation, why did he himself attribute to Christ the role of the basic rock, and never claimed to himself or mentioned any special leadership role in the Church (see 1 Peter 2:6-8)?

6 - If Peter was the head of the Church, the “rock” of its foundation, why didn’t Paul confirm this in 1 Corinthians 10:4, as he assured that Christ is the rock?

7 - If Peter was the first Pope, how could Paul reprimand him so severely because he acted in a wrong way (see Galatians 2:11-14)?

Note: Nowhere in the writings of Paul does he confer any primacy to Peter whatsoever. On the contrary, when he had the opportunity to call Peter the Rock of the Church, Paul said that there's no other foundation other than Christ. I Cor 3:11.

8 - If Peter was the first Pope, why does Paul say that the Church is built on the human foundation of the apostles and prophets, without discriminating Peter as the most important of these (see Ephesians 2:20)?

Note: Christ in this text is presented again as the Church’s cornerstone.

9 - If Peter was the first Pope, why didn’t Paul discriminate Peter as the principal one, as he made reference to Peter, together with James and John as the columns of the Church (see Galatians 2:9)?

Note: He mentions James in the first place.

10 - If Peter was the first Pope, why didn’t the final authority of the Jerusalem church remain with Peter, but with the apostles, later substituted by “elders”?

Note: Besides having been “the apostles” who sent Peter to Samaria (Acts 8:14) to supervise the new Christian communities, they also did the same sending Barnabas to Antioquia (Acts 11:22), later Judas and Silas to the same place (Acts 15:22-27).

11 - If Peter was the first Pope, why were “James and the elders” the ones who recommended that Paul submitted himself to a purification rite in the Temple (Acts 21:18, 23-24)?

12 - If Peter was the first Pope, why does Paul make clear in Galatians that he did not consider Jerusalem a divinely appointed administrative center for all the congregational activity?

Note: After his conversion Paul did not go to Jerusalem, to seek guidance from Peter and the leadership of the Church there, but to Damascus.

13 - If Peter was the head of the Church, the “rock” of its foundation, why did Paul, after his conversion, receive divine instructions through a native of Damascus, called Ananias, and not through Peter?

Note: In Galatians 1: 16, 17 he says clearly that after his conversion he did not resort to any human source of authority.

14 - If Peter was the first Pope, why did Paul travel to Jerusalem only three years later and declared that he only saw Peter and James, and no other apostle in his fifteen-day sojourn there?

15 - If Peter was the head of the Church, the “rock” of its foundation, why did Paul set Antioquia as the base of his operations, and although that city was near Jerusalem he did not see a reason to address himself to the capital of the Judea.

16 - If Peter was the first Pope, why don’t the stories of Paul’s missionary trips ever indicate that he undertook them under the recommendation of any “administrative board”, and with a route and a budget duly approved by an ecclesiastical leader (Acts 13, 15, 20, etc.--especially 15:36)?

17 - If Peter was head of the Church, the “rock” of its foundation, why did Paul go back up to Jerusalem only after fourteen years, accompanied by Barnabas and Titus and not Peter, and that because he had a “revelation” from the Lord (see Gal. 2: 1, 2)?

18 - If Peter was the first Pope, why the only Biblical manuscripts after the fall of Jerusalem, from the apostle John, written decades after the desolation of Jerusalem, don’t ever mention any Church leader [or Pope] or Christian administrative center in his days, having a Peter as the top leader?

19 - If Peter was the head of the Church, the “rock” of its foundation, why does John in the book of Revelation, portray Christ as sending messages to the seven churches of Asia Minor, not any Pope (Rev. 1 to 3), and in none of these messages is there any suggestion or indication that those congregations were under an external direction, but that of Christ Himself?

20 - If Peter was the first Pope, why, in the available writings of Christian authors from the second and third centuries, nothing is indicated regarding the existence of a centered administration to supervise the numerous Christian congregations, under the command of Peter?

Note: The history of the period discloses, in contrast, something much different--that the centered religious authority was the product of a post-apostolic and post-Biblical development.

21 - If Peter was the Rock, why didn't Jesus plainly say, 'UPON YOU', will I build my Church?

Note: Obviously because Jesus was referring to another Rock, the truth that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God. He was obviously contrasting the character of Peter as expressed in the Gospels with the solid and unshakeable rock of Jesus.

22 - If Peter was a solid Rock, why did Jesus severely rebuke him shortly after? Matthew 16:22-23

Note: Jesus rebuked Satan who was speaking through Peter. So, if Peter had just been considered by Jesus as a 'rock', how could he have become so quickly an instrument of Satan?If Jesus had just established Peter as the foundation of the Church, this episode would clearly demonstrate that Jesus made a gross mistake, which is of course, absurd. Therefore, rock CANNOT be referring to Peter.

23 - If Peter was the Rock, why didn't Jesus commission Peter to build his church, instead of saying I WILL BUILD my church?

Note: Jesus is the builder and maker of the church and its foundation. "For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." I Cor. 3: 11.

24. If Jesus' statement in Matthew 16 was so important to the establishment of the Church, why do all the other Gospel omit these words altogether?

Note: If all we had were the other 3 Gospels, the Catholic Church would not have ANY biblical basis for their Papacy. But then again, the Catholic hierarchy DOES NOT need the Scriptures to invent new dogmas, they resort to their own tradition to supplant the Scriptures.

25. If Peter was the solid rock, what does his denial of Christ reveal about Peter's total inability to be the foundation of anything?

Note: Apparently, Peter continued to show his unstableness as a sinner long after that night of denial, and had to be confronted by Paul because he was changing his approach to please different groups of converts. (See Galatians 2:11-14 for full account.)

___________________________

Since Peter was not the rock has been clearly demonstrated here, Jesus' statement "I will give you the keys of the kingdom" cannot refer to Peter either. Rather, Jesus says this again to all his disciples in Matthew 18:18 as the Church that Jesus HIMSELF would build. Because Peter had no primacy in the foundation and establishment of the Church in the early Church, the Papacy does not follow any so-called "line of apostles" after Peter and therefore their arrogance of the title of the Church that Peter built is based on a fallacy.

Furthermore, because the history of the Roman Catholicism clearly demonstrates how it has dishonored the name of Christ by replacing the true Gospel with its own saving rituals and false beliefs, claiming the Bible is insufficient to instruct in righteousness, persecuting those who would hold the Scriptures as their only norm of faith, claiming the Pope is God on earth, the Roman Catholic Church and its false system should here be interpreted as the "gates of hell", who stand in direct opposition to the true Church of Christ, those who have "kept the commandments and have the faith of Jesus" (Rev. 14:12) in all centuries, all over the world.

We urge our sincere and faithful Catholic brethren who love Christ and find themselves inside the Roman Catholic Church to heed the invitation of Christ in Revelation: "And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, MY PEOPLE, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." Rev. 18:4.

"But in vain they do worship me, teaching [for] doctrines the commandments of men." Mat 15:9:

Mary, a Savior as Christ

Stephen was not able to withstand the document below and totally blocked my participation in his forum.

I found this when doing some research on Matriology, the belief by Catholic that Mary is a Savior, just like Christ. This is from Ratzinger's funeral eulogy to Pope John II.

The original source is here http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/2005/documents/ns_lit_doc_20050408_messa-esequiale-jp-ii_it.html

_________________
Final Commendation and Farewell

Following the prayer after Communion, the Dean of the College of Cardinals performs the rite of the final commendation and farewell. Standing next to the coffin with the other concelebrants, he invites those present to pray with these words:

Dear brothers and sisters, we entrust to the most gentle mercy of God the soul of our Pope John Paul, Bishop of the Catholic Church, who confirmed his brothers with belief in the resurrection.

We pray to God the Father through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit for the deceased, so that, ransomed by death, he may be received in his peace and that his body may rise on the last day.

The Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of the Apostles and SAVIOR OF THE PEOPLE OF ROME, intercede to God for us so that the face of his blessed Son may be shown to our Pope and comfort the Church with the light of the resurrection.

All pray in a moment of silence.
__________________________

Deliver Us From Evil

I want to start a post on the movie Deliver Us From Evil, a documentary about the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, some as young as 9 months! This movie shows what really goes on in the high levels of power inside the Catholic Church, all the disgusting arrogance, the lying, the dishonesty, the perjury, the total disregard for children by the Catholic Church in America and all over the world.

This is a real portrait of the Catholic church and its leadership. John describes the Apostate church as the whore of Revelation, and Babylon that gave the nations to drink of the wine of her fornication (Revelation 14:8). Catholics have drunk and are unable to see this false religion as it really is, one of the instruments of Satan to dishonor the name of God on earth. I pray that Catholics all over the world will see this as a wake up call to look for the truth.

Catholic Authors Confirm Change of Sabbath by the Church

The following quotations by Catholic authors confirm that the Catholic Church takes full responsibility for changing the Law of God:

"It was the Catholic Church which, by the authority of Jesus Christ, has transferred this rest [from the Bible Sabbath] to Sunday . . . . Thus the observance of Sunday by the Protestants is an homage they pay, in spite of themselves, to the authority of the [Catholic] Church," (Monsignor Louis Segur, Plain Talk About Protestantism of Today, 1868, p. 213).

"From this same Catholic Church you [Protestants] have accepted your Sunday, and that Sunday, as the Lord's day, she has handed down as a tradition; and the entire Protestant world has accepted it as a tradition, for you have not an iota of Scripture to establish it. Therefore that which you have accepted as your rule of faith, inadequate as it of course is, as well as your Sunday you have accepted on the authority of the Roman Catholic Church," (D.B. Ray, The Papal Controversy, p. 179).

"If Protestants would follow the Bible, they should worship God on the Sabbath Day. In keeping the Sunday they are following a law of the Catholic Church," (Albert Smith, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore replying for the Cardinal in a letter dated February 10, 1920).

"All of us believe many things in regard to religion that we do not find in the Bible. For example, nowhere in the Bible do we find that Christ or the Apostles changed [the day of worship] from Saturday to Sunday. We have the commandment of God given to Moses to keep holy the Sabbath Day, that is the 7th day of the week, Saturday. Today most Christians keep Sunday because it has been revealed to us by the Church outside the Bible," (Article, "To Tell You The Truth," The Catholic Virginian, October 3, 1947, p. 9).

"For ages all Christian nations looked to the Catholic Church, and, as we have seen, the various states enforced by law her ordinances as to worship and cessation of labor on Sunday. Protestantism, in discarding the authority of the Church, has no good reason for its Sunday theory, and ought logically, to keep Saturday as the Sabbath. The State in passing laws for the due Sanctification of Sunday, is unwittingly acknowledging the authority of the Catholic Church, and carrying out more or less faithfully its prescriptions. The Sunday as a day of the week set apart for the obligatory public worship of Almighty God is purely a creation of the Catholic Church," (John Gilmary Shea, American Catholic Quarterly, January 1883, p. 139).

"Protestants . . . accept Sunday rather than Saturday as the day for public worship after the Catholic Church made the change . . . . But the Protestant mind does not seem to realize that in accepting the Bible, in observing the Sunday, they are accepting the authority of the spokesman for the church, the Pope," (Our Sunday Visitor, February 5, 1950).

"Prove to me from the Bible alone that I am bound to keep Sunday holy. There is no such law in the Bible. It is a law of the holy Catholic Church alone. The Bible says 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.' The Catholic Church says, No. By my divine power I abolish the Sabbath day and command you to keep holy the first day of the week. And lo! The entire civilized world bows down in reverent obedience to the command of the Holy Catholic Church," (Priest Thomas Enright, CSSR, President of Redemptorist College, Kansas City, Missouri, in a lecture at Hartford, Kansas, February 18, 1884).

"Question -- By what authority did the Church substitute Sunday for Saturday? Answer -- The Church substituted Sunday for Saturday by the plentitude of that divine power which Jesus Christ bestowed upon her," (Peter F. Geiermann, The Convert's Catechism of Catholic Doctrine, 1923 edition, p. 59).

"Question -- How prove you that the Church hath power to command feasts and holy days? Answer -- By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants allow of [by observing it]; and therefore they fondly contradict themselves, by keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same church," (Priest Henry Tuberville, An Abridgement of the Christian Doctrine, p. 58).

"Question -- What Bible authority is there for changing the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week? Who gave the Pope the authority to change a command of God? Answer -- If the Bible is the only guide for the Christian, the Seventh-day Adventist is right, in observing the Saturday with the Jew . . . . Is it not strange that those who make the Bible their only teacher, should inconsistently follow in this matter the tradition of the Catholic Church?" (Bertrand Conway, The Question Box, 1903 edition, pp. 254-255, 1915 edition, p. 179).

"Reason and common sense demand the acceptance of one or the other of these alternatives: either Protestantism and the keeping holy of Saturday, or Catholicity and the keeping holy of Sunday. Compromise is impossible," (Catholic Mirror, September 2 and December 23, 1893).

"The Catholic Church . . . by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday," (The Catholic Mirror, September 23, 1893).

"The Catholic Church of its own infallible authority created Sunday a holy day to take the place of the Sabbath of the old law," (Kansas City Catholic, February 9, 1893).

"We Catholics, then, have precisely the same authority for keeping Sunday holy instead of Saturday as we have for every other article of our creed; namely, the authority of the [Catholic] Church . . . whereas you who are Protestants have really no authority for it whatever; for there is no authority for it in the Bible, and you will not allow that there can be authority for it anywhere else. Both you and we do, in fact, follow tradition in this matter; but we follow it, believing it to be a part of God's word, and the [Catholic] Church to be its divinely appointed guardian and interpreter; you follow it [the Catholic Church] denouncing it all the time as a fallible and treacherous guide, which often 'makes the commandments of God of none effect' [Matthew 15:6]," (The Brotherhood of St. Paul, The Clifton Tracts, Vol. 4, tract 4, p. 15).

Questions for Stephen Korsman, a Catholic Apologist

Stephen Korsman, a catholic, has been attacking the SDA Church for years in his Theotokos Blog. This new blog will be analyzing his attacks on the SDA Church from a Biblical perspective. From a blog which he contributes with we read:

"Stephen Korsman is a cradle Catholic from South Africa, with a Catholic history from both his mother's Irish/English side and his father's Dutch side. He is a medical virologist in Mthatha, South Africa, with a family history of science - archaeology (mother) and molecular biology (sister). His interest in apologetics and different belief systems began when he was 13. The topics he came across caused him a lot of concern - the Trinity, the state of the dead, and which days Christians should observe (Sabbath, Sunday, Christmas, Easter, Passover, etc.). From there he developed an interest in Adventism, and began defending his faith from that perspective. He hopes to engage in a more positive dialogue with Adventism than a mere defensive one, and gain and encourage better understanding of both faiths on both sides."

The fact is that his blog Theotokos is of a vastly different nature from that of a person looking for dialogue with Adventists. He has it as a personal mission to review the "heresies" of the SDA message vis-à-vis the Catholic tradition, not the Bible. To confirm this, his blog has as a heading: "Pray for us, o most holy Theotokos (Mother of God, Mary)." Under that, as if to signify the hierarchy of intercession, he brings: "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have Mercy on us Sinners." He is not shy in his belief in the heretical teachings of the intercession and adoration of Mary. Where is that in the Bible?

His efforts not would have been significant (his arguments are quite obviously unbiblical and firmly based on the catholic tradition) were it not for the fact that now he is part of a blog of progressive adventism. His first blog there was questioning the Sabbath so this seems to be just a subtle attempt to questions the Adventist faith and bring more controversy to the church.

To begin this discussion I'd like to challenge Stephen to respond objectively (point by point) and using the Bible solely the following questions:

1. Your site of catholic apologetics brings as its heading the belief in the intercession and adoration of Mary, mother of Jesus. If you're trying to be Scriptural on your site, where in Bible have you found evidence that we should pray to Mary? Please quote book and verse only. (Church fathers not allowed please).

2. In your many diatribes against Sabbath keeping, you say that there's no evidence of Sabbath keeping in the New Testament [Would anyone try to make it a law for the English people to speak English instead of Japanese? Such a law would be totally innocuous, just like a new emphasis on Sabbath-keeping would be for first century Jews and Christians]. Please provide one verse in the NT that says explicitly, beyond a shadow of a doubt that Sabbath no longer was the day of rest. Furthermore, please substantiate that claim by showing that Jesus told his disciples that Sunday was now to be observed as the day of rest. Please quote 1 book and verse only. (Church fathers not allowed please).

3. If Jesus was our utmost example, what day of the week did Jesus observe as holy? Please quote 1 book and verse only. (Church fathers not allowed please).

4. If God sanctified the Sabbath and Adam did not as you boldly exclaim in your support of the day of the Sun, then Adam was not required to sanctify something that God held as holy and was therefore, sinning against God. Please provide one verse that shows that Adam DID NOT sanctify the Sabbath. Also, substantiate the claim that Adam DID NOT observed any day as your blog intimates.

5. If God wrote with his own finger the Sabbath commandment, would He not have personally changed this commandment? It's also the longest commandment and a sign between God and his people, thus of utmost importance. Please quote 1 book and verse only where God changed his law. (Church fathers not allowed please).

6. If "Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath" (Matthew 12:8), which day is the Day of the Lord? Please provide one Bible verse where Sunday is mentioned as the Day of the Lord. Both words must appear together. Please quote 1 book and verse only. (Church fathers not allowed please).

7. If Jesus instituted the Sunday as the celebration of the day of his ressurrection, please quote 1 book and verse only where we have AN EXPLICIT commandment to do so. It must be something to the effect: "And Jesus said to his disciples: From now on, you shall no longer sanctify the Sabbath, you shall celebrate Sunday. Please quote 1 book and verse only. (Church fathers not allowed please).

One of the Catholics' most beloved word is MYSTERY. The late Pope John in his DIES DOMINI "Apostolic" Letter quotes many misteries: the mystery of his identity, the Paschal Mystery of Christ, mystery of the world's origin, mystery of the biblical "rest" of God, the Christian mystery, the mystery of the Church, mystery of the kenosis, Easter mystery, mystery of the beginning, the entire mystery of Christ, mystery of the Incarnation, mystery of the saints, mystery of the Lord. Obviously he meant to make the Catholic Church the only possessor of the meaning of these mysteries and thus, make people slaves of the belief that the Pope has the KEYS to these mysteries. How absurd! How blasphemous!

In keeping with tradition, apparently Stephen wants to make it also a mystery the fact that the Sunday was instituted by tradition and NOT by the BIBLE. It is consequently a mystery why the Catholic changed so much in the Bible and instituted the words and precepts of MEN in place of the words of God.

This is just the beginning of our defense of the SDA faith. We are eagerly waiting for a BIblical response to the questions above, book and verse.