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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You can grab your hymnols and open up the song number 227, Saved by the Blood. Thank you. Thank you guys. Thanks. Hymn number 227. Thank you. I'll stand in a new earth begun. Sing praise to the Father and praise to the Son. Sing by the blood of the crucified one. Glory, I'll sing. Glory, I'll sing. My sins are all part and my guilt is all gone. Glory, I'll sing. Glory, I'll sing. I'll sing by the blood of the crucified one. Sing by the blood of the crucified one. The angels rejoicing because it is done. A child of the Father joined here with the Son. Sing by the blood of the crucified one. Glory, I'll sing. Glory, I'll sing. My sins are all part and my guilt is all gone. Glory, I'll sing. Glory, I'll sing. I'll sing by the blood of the crucified one. Sing by the blood of the crucified one. The Father he spake and his will it was done. Break my eyes of my pardon, his own precious Son. Sing by the blood of the crucified one. Glory, I'll sing. Glory, I'll sing. My sins are all part and my guilt is all gone. Glory, I'll sing. Glory, I'll sing. I'll sing by the blood of the crucified one. On the last. Sing by the blood of the crucified one. All hail to the Father. All hail to the Son. All hail to the Spirit, the great, great One. Stay by the blood of the crucified one. Glory, I'll sing. Glory, I'll sing. My sins are all part and my guilt is all gone. Glory, I'll sing. Glory, I'll sing. I'll stay by the blood of the crucified one. Amen. We're the TJ. Open this up and we're going to pray. It was great. You have my Father. Thank you so much for this day. We bless those who were able to make it here this morning. We bless the soul warning and sermon. And I encourage those that weren't able to make it, Lord. And Jesus Christ, amen. Amen. Alright, let's open up to our next song. Song 228. I hope you didn't close that head roll. It's like a baby. Song 228, I would love to tell the story. In 228. First, I'd love to tell the story of mercy, things of love. Of Jesus and his glory, of Jesus and his love. I'd love to tell the story because I know it's true. It satisfies my long means as nothing else can do. I'd love to tell the story. It will be my living glory. To tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love. I'd love to tell the story, how wonderful it seems. That all the golden fancies of all our golden dreams. I'd love to tell the story, it gives so much for me. And that is just the reason I tell it out to thee. I'd love to tell the story. It will be my living glory. To tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love. I'd love to tell the story, it's pleasant to repeat. But sweet each time I tell it, oh, wonderfully sweet. I'd love to tell a story, for some have never heard. The message of salvation from God's own holy word. I'd love to tell the story. It will be my living glory. To tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love. I'd love to tell the story for those who know it best. It seems hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest. And when it seems of glory, I sing a new, new song. It will be the old, old story that I have lost so long. I'd love to tell the story. It will be my living glory. To tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love. Amen. All right, great singing this morning. At this time, we're going to go through our announcements. If you do not have a bulletin yet and you need one, slip up your hand real high, and Brother Lindsay will make sure that you get one if you need one. And then if you open up to the first page, we've got our service times listed there. It's always Sunday morning at 1030, Sunday afternoon again at 4 p.m. And then Wednesday nights at 7 p.m. is our Bible study. We're going to be in Isaiah chapter 19 this week, so try to make it out for that if you can. Isaiah is a great book of the Bible, going verse by verse. We've got the soul-winning opportunities listed there, as well as the salvations and the baptisms for the month of July, as well as for 2021. We're going to count up any salvations to report for the week. If you got out soul-winning this week, and you've seen any people saved, just slip up your hand real quick. We'll get those counted up. All right. And don't forget we've got a soul-winning time this afternoon. We meet up at 1.30. If you're interested in going out with us and preaching the gospel, then you can speak to myself or Brother Vernon. Brother Vernon, raise up your hand real quick. He leads the Sunday afternoon time. And what we do, especially if you're new to this, we don't all meet back up here before 1.30, so that's why I'm saying you could talk to me, you could talk to him, you could talk to some other members of our church so that you can find out where we meet up, because normally what we do is we use a WhatsApp group and use communication that way, because not everybody finishes lunch at the same time. Some people want to get started earlier. Some people want to get started later. So he gets the place together and knows where we're going to be going so you can get that location from him. And then, especially if you are new, talk to him, talk to me, and we'll get you paired up with someone from our church so that you can be a silent partner, you can go out with us, you can see the way that we preach the gospel to people, how we explain salvation just by being real thorough through the Bible, and you can just kind of see how we do it. And, you know, there's no... You may be apprehensive, say, Well, I've never done this before. That's fine. That's great. You don't really have to do anything but show up. Just come along with us, see what it's like to just give the gospel to someone and hopefully see some people get saved, and we'd love to have you out for that, but just make sure that you talk to somebody if you're interested in coming, because we don't all gather up here as a group and then go out. We kind of meet up on the field, so we'll just make sure that you're able to know where we're going after church today. So just right after service, if you're interested in coming out with us, then speak to one of us. We've got the offering totals listed down there at the bottom of the page for the month of July. Prayer requests, nothing new to add. Remember to pray for Mrs. Adams tomorrow as our second surgery for cataracts, and that's going to be taking place tomorrow. I'm not sure if it's morning or afternoon, but just say an extra prayer for her maybe in the morning, and then, yep, not a whole lot of updates on that, but please continue to pray for everyone on our prayer list here. August challenge, so the challenge for the month of August is to bring a first-time visitor to church, and if you do that, then you will receive a prize as we do with many of our monthly challenges. So one of the best ways to do this is, one, if you have family, friends, coworkers, people like that that you talk to, you're in communication with, invite them out to church. Tell them all the reasons why you like this church and express those reasons to them so that you think, hey, I think you should come along and be part of this church, or at least just come and visit us. Just come and check it out, see what you think, and for the whole month of August, anyone who brings first-time visitors will receive a prize, and we give out those prizes usually at the month end after we know how many people have brought visitors. So if you brought visitors, make sure you keep coming to come collect your prize later on. I mean, even if you're new or here and you bring someone for the first time, hey, keep coming back, and we'll get you that prize in September or October or November. Sometimes a little delayed with the prize-giving, but they do always come, so I do promise you that. If you keep coming here, we will ultimately get that prize out to you. We have a great special announcement here. We have a special guest with Pastor Mejia coming the week of August, well, the August 11th midweek service on Wednesday night. Pastor Mejia's gonna be preaching for us here. It's funny how this worked out. I'm actually gonna be in L.A. I'm gonna be preaching their midweek service, so we're doing, like, a church swap thing here, and it was uncoordinated. It just happened to work out that way. It's really funny, because he called me and left me a message, and then I was like, you gotta be kidding me, because I was literally about to call him that same day and let him know that I'm gonna be in California that week. So I know some of you here already know that I'm going out there for work, so that's the week I was gonna be there. So I think it's gonna work out great. You guys, you know, especially for those of you that travel, try to make it down. If you don't normally come on a Wednesday night, try to come out here and hear Pastor Mejia preach. It's not just a normal Bible study, not that that should matter, but come on out, hear him preach, encourage him, talk to him, you know, just tell him, you know, we're praying for him, and I'm sure you'll be blessed by that. So I'm really excited to have him out here on August 11th. We've got upcoming events listed there. I've gone over these multiple times. If you're interested in any of these events and attending, you know, just let me know. I don't know, you know, the Mountain Baptist Church camp, I don't know if that's open to more people, excuse me, attending or not, but I can happily find out for you. But all the rest of them are open for visitors, and then I listed down there at the bottom the camping trip dates are already planned out. So if you want to come to our camp trip next year, church provides all of the campsites for free. So all you have to do is come and bring food and, you know, whatever, your camping gear and things like that. Church also supplies some camping gear for those who don't have some. So, you know, we really don't want to have anything prevent you from coming. And obviously, whatever you would be eating during the week anyways, you should be able to feed yourself. So I don't think that's asking too much, but we will happily, there's other people here, my family especially, we've got extra camping gear. Just in general, we kind of have extra of just about everything. Not tons of extra, but we have, you know, if they're for a person or two people, you know, we've got extra tents, extra sleeping bags, extra, you know, just kind of lots of extra supplies. So we'd love to have you come out and visit, but I'll go into details more on that a lot later. I just wanted to point out that we got the dates firm. They're planned. It's scheduled. So try to make sure you can get off for this. It's a great event. Had a great time this year. We have lots of, I talked to some of the pastors already that came last year or this year to come next year, and everybody is interested in coming back. So obviously they've got schedules and things to work out, but there's a lot of great preaching. It's going to be awesome, and I'm going to try to fill it up with even more this time. It went so well, and I didn't know what to expect. I'm going to invite more people to come to this because there's always time to hear preaching, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, we've got all the days of the week. There are practically, I mean, we're going to be there Saturday, so there's plenty of time for preaching, and I'll see who all can come and make it, and that will be a lot of fun. And I also got that, for those of you here this year, who were there this year, we have that, we had booked that group shelter, the big building, for just like two of the days, two or three of the days. We're going to have that all week. So I just went and got that whole thing, so we'll always be meeting in the same place. You don't have to worry about other people, you know, being at these other shelters and stuff. And then we can also probably do some food and stuff. So we're going to be ramping it up a notch, and I'll be looking for volunteers, but again, I'm not going to get into all that later. Just for now, make sure you can get these dates off of work because it would be a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to it this year. John 8, so we've got until tonight, I already put on here our new Bible memory passage, which is just compiling all of John chapter 8. It's going to be week one of three. But you have until tonight to do the last section that we're doing all the way through verse 59. I think it was verse 44 through 59. So if you're still working on that, you have until tonight to get that done. Who's going to get that last section done of John chapter 8? And if you've already even finished it, just raise your hand. Like if you did all of John chapter 8, that's fine. It counts. But I just want to make sure, because there's two prizes, right? There's a prize for finishing up this short section, and then there's a prize for all of John chapter 8. So if you got the last section done, including if you got the whole chapter done, slip up your hand again real quick. I want to make sure I get a good count. One, two, three. Is that? Okay. I don't think she got it. Did she get that? No? All right. Very good. And hopefully I'm not missing any. I got three people. So let me write that down here. Obviously you have until tonight, and I'll get the final count next week. But I just want an idea here. And then the big one, John chapter 8, who thinks they're going to have, who already has it done or will have it done in three weeks? All right. It's awesome. That's, yeah, that's, work on it. You got three weeks. All right. We've been, I brought it up three weeks ago, I think. So you had like six weeks to do it when I first brought up the prize. Now you should be halfway done, hopefully. But you know, it's worth it. We got a big prize. And for those of you that haven't been, you know, maybe you're new or you're visiting, for this, if you memorize all of John chapter 8, because we get prizes for our Bible memory, and they're all kind of relative to how long the passage is. So the shorter passages, we get prizes. They're kind of short, like smaller prizes. And then the longer they are, the bigger the prize is. John chapter 8 is 59 verses. But this one is, this prize is even bigger than that. Just because we ended up, talking about the camping trip, we ended up getting these bonus points and stuff, which can give you some free nights. So the prize, if you memorize all of John chapter 8, this is open to everybody. You don't have to be like a member of our church. You've got three weeks, though, to do this. We've been working on this as a church since like probably the beginning of the year. So, but if you want to get all of John chapter 8 memorized, we're giving away two nights stay at a cottage in a Georgia State Park. So, super cool prize, great prize. We're trying to encourage everyone to do Bible memory. It's low cost on the church because we've already racked up the points by doing the camping trip. So I figured instead of rolling that over to next year, I kind of wanted to give away these prizes and encourage some Bible memory. So get it done. You've got three weeks, 59 verses. You've got to be able to quote a word perfect. You can't be kind of close. You've got to nail it. You've got to get it down. And someone else will have to check your work, basically. Someone outside of your family, you're going to have to quote it to somebody that can hear you and follow along in their Bible and make sure you get every word. Every word of God is important. So when we're doing Bible memory, we're memorizing every word of this passage. You've got to get them all right. All right. All that being said, upcoming birthdays and anniversaries there for the month of August. Am I missing anyone, any birthdays or anniversaries for August on the page? We've got the Taylor families plugged in here. So they've got a couple of birthdays this month. And today is Sarah's birthday. My daughter's turned eight today. Where is Sarah? Is Sarah with Emily? Oh, I see you. You're hiding. And as we always do, if your birthday falls on a church day and you're in church on that day, then we'll sing happy birthday to you. So we're going to sing happy birthday to Sarah right now. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Sarah. Happy birthday to you. Sarah's being a little shy. And let's see. I think that's about it for our announcement. So I'm going to turn the service back over. Brother Peters is going to lead us in our next song. Okay church, if you don't open up your handles to song 169. Song 169, come out now. Sing this song 169. All right church, let's sing this down on the first. Come, thou fount of every blessing, to my heart you sing thy praise. Screams of mercy never seem seen. I call for songs of loudest praise. Teach me some melody sung in, sung by flaming tongues above. Praise the mount I've faced upon it, mount of thy redeeming love. Here I raise my Ebenezer, either by thy help I come. And I know by thy good pleasure, safely I'll arrive at home. Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God. He to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood. Oh to praise how great a care, daily I'm constrained to be. Led by goodness, like a care, I might wandering hearts with thee. Oh to wonder, Lord I feel it, oh to lead the God I love. Here's my heart, oh take it, seal it, seal it for thy works above. Amen from the stadium. At this time we're going to play our Sunday morning offering. Let's go to Lindsey if you can come up for us. While the offering plate is being passed around, if you guys can open up your Bibles to Matthew chapter 6. It's Matthew chapter 6. And as we do customary here at Stronghold Baptist Church, we're going to read the entire chapter and I'm going to ask Brother Carter if he can please read that for us. Once again that's Matthew chapter 6. Take heed that ye do not your arms before men, to be seen of them, otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine arms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But when thou doest arms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, that thine arms may be in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them, for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him. After this manner therefore pray ye, our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our dead earth. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen. For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Moreover, when ye fast, be not as the hypocrites of a sad countenance, for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret. And thy Father which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The light of the body is the eye. If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek, for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Brother Peter, would you mind praying for us, please? Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you so much for gathering us here, Lord. We want to just pray that you feel past your emergence with your Spirit as he comes up to preach for our Father, that he could preach with power and boldness. Lord, and we just pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. All right. All right. So this morning I'm going to preach this sermon. Actually, it was prompted by some of the billboards I've seen around town lately, and I don't know if you've seen these or not, but they say, Pray the Rosary for America, or something like that. I've seen them on the 85. I just saw some yesterday, and I kind of want to cover that a little bit. I'm going to expose, for those of you, I didn't have a Catholic upbringing, so this was a lot, you know, the rosary is for me. I know what it is. Basically, the rosary, if you see people with the beads with the cross on it, they're usually like black beads. All Catholics have them, and you'll see them sometimes praying, and they kind of hold them like a lucky rabbit's foot, and kind of like rub them a little, and they'll move their fingers back and forth. There's actually a process that they have for actually praying the rosary, and I'm going to expose to you today a lot of the wickedness behind that, and also, you know, the purpose for this is, obviously, we're not Catholic. We don't believe Catholic doctrine, and I don't try to get too deep into any Catholic doctrine. We're going to be doing a lot of Bible today, so you should learn something anyways, but I'm going to start off just by saying, you know, when people say pray, people say, oh, pray for America, pray the rosary for America. A lot of people have this mindset that they really just kind of don't think about very much, and they go, oh, well, that's good. Well, they're Catholic. We're not, but that's a good thing anyways, and this New Age philosophy of just kind of real accepting of everything. Well, as long as they're praying, then that's a good thing, right? You know what? No, it's not always a good thing. In that case, it's actually a really bad thing, and if you want to see America prosper, if you want God to spare judgment, if you want God to bless the country, then praying the rosary is actually the exact opposite thing that you want to do, and I'm going to prove this to you from scripture that people who are praying the rosary today, instead of for America to bless America, it's actually going to be condemning America, and we're going to see just, I think, without, you know, it is not a stretch at all to see that what they're doing when they pray the rosary has literally already been covered in scripture, of people doing almost the exact same thing, and where God was going to destroy the country because of that, and at the crux of that just lies the God that the Catholics pray to is not the God of the Bible. It's not. They have a different God. Now, you can say, oh, but they believe in the Trinity, and they use the Bible and everything else. I understand that, but there's false Christs, just as there's false gospels, and they've made and created a false God in the image out of their own heart of whatever they want to worship, which is not the God of the Bible, and in fact, when you pray the rosary, because that's specifically what we're getting into, that has way more to do with Mary than it has to do with anyone else, and praying to a woman, praying to a human being, woman, Mary, I mean, they put Mary essentially in the place of God, and they go to this other intercessor. They call her the Mediatrix. You know, the Bible says that there's one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, and then the Catholic Church comes along and says, well, no, there's actually this Mediatrix that we could go to, that we could go to Mary, and then Mary could go to Jesus, and then Jesus goes, you know, it's like, no. That's nowhere in Scripture. They end up worshipping a woman, and, you know, elevating her to a status of godhood, or a goddess, and it's wicked, it's wrong, and you know what, it makes God angry, and when you read the Bible, if anyone who's read the Bible cover, cover even one time, those of you who know the Ten Commandments, the Bible says, you know, what are the first two commandments? The first two commandments, the Ten Commandments have to do with not having any other gods before God, and not making any images, not making any graven images, any stones, anything like that to bow down and worship. If you go to a Catholic Church today, what are you going to find? How many images, graven images, stone images, carved images, are they going to have set up in their auditorium, in their church, and people walk over there, they light candles to them, they bow down to them, and pray to them, that's idolatry, folks, and this is why God destroyed the children of Israel, you know, brought them into captivity, because they went after strange gods. He does this over and over and over again in Scripture, it makes them really angry, because the Bible says that the Lord our God is a jealous God, alright, look, I know it's exciting that we have a little lizard running around, but try to pay attention, alright, it's not going to do that much, just let it run across the carpet, and stay focused on the sermon this morning. Now, I've got some sources from Catholic websites, because I want to go over what the rosary is, for those of you that don't know, because I didn't know that much about it, and as I started looking at some of the stuff, I'm going, wow, this is so wicked, and what it really is, is just Catholic superstition, but it's mixed in with other, like, Eastern mysticism, and you're going to see this, how it's really just this blend of heathen worship, is ultimately what it is, so I'm going to read this for you, this is from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website, okay, sounds pretty officially Catholic, but here's the thing, I went to a few different sources, Catholic sources, just because I don't like misrepresenting anybody in what they believe, right, I like to just see, okay, what's the doctrine, but here's, you know, with Catholics, it's pretty easy, and everything that I'm going to read to you, this isn't just a one-off, this was consistent across many sites that I looked at, and this is a pretty basic, fundamental doctrine for them, you know, this praying, I mean, we're seeing it on billboard signs, you've all probably seen it, so this isn't some, oh, there's this sect that believes this, and this sect that believes that, you know, the pope determines what everyone's supposed to believe anyways, right, so their doctrine is supposed to all be uniform, but here's what it says, and this is kind of laughable in and of itself, the first thing that it says here, the rosary is a scripture-based prayer, scripture-based, but then it says it begins with the Apostles' Creed, now I don't know if you know what the Apostles' Creed is, I know what it is, because I grew up in a Catholic light church, in a Presbyterian church, and I had to memorize and recite this when I was confirmed, we had to just know this and memorize this, and sometimes it was just chanted in church services, which again is just kind of weird, but I'll read this for you, and this, by the way, is exactly what I learned in a Protestant church, right, straight from the Catholics, like this is literally a Catholic thing, the Apostles' Creed, and it was just brought over because, you know, all these reformed or Protestant denominations all came from the Catholic Church, and, you know, can you bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No, not according to the Bible. Anyways, I don't want to get too far off into that rabbit trail, but here's what the Apostles' Creed is, and it says that they start with the Apostles' Creed, and this is all, this is scripture-based, but it's really just a creed of saying this is what we believe. Now, there's a lot of things in this creed that are just true and factual, right? The Bible says, I believe in God, or not the Bible says, excuse me, I'm going to say that a lot because I'm so used to saying the Bible says, the Bible says, because we do a lot of scripture quoting here, but I'm quoting these other sources, so here's what the Apostles' Creed says, I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord. Now, the only exception I would have is His only begotten Son, because there is a difference there. Where this continues on, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried, He descended into hell. The third day He arose again from the dead, He ascended into heaven. He sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. That's true factual statement, right? So there's nothing wrong with the statement, and then it says, I believe in the Holy Spirit, and this is what gets me, because as a Protestant, this last, I mean, we had to memorize this, and we chant this, and we chant this in church. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, so I'm reciting, I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, and I'm not a Catholic. I thought the Protestants were supposed to be, we protest the Catholic Church, we're not Catholic, we're Christian, we don't have anything to do with Catholicism, yet I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, and that's what you're chanting, right? That's what I chanted, not knowing it. The communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting, right? So there's, this is just some creed of things that they believe, but they chanted, they chanted. Now, where in the Bible do we ever see that we're supposed to be chanting anything? It's not found in Scripture. Now, that's what it begins with, it says, which summarizes the great mysteries of the Catholic faith, and then it says that our Father, which introduces each mystery, is from the Gospels, and we'll get into that, too, real soon here. The first part of the Hail Mary is the angel's words announcing Christ's birth and Elizabeth's greeting to Mary. Saint Pius V officially added the second part of the Hail Mary. The mysteries of the rosary center on the events of Christ's life. There are four sets of mysteries, joyful, sorrowful, glorious, and then voluminous, which was added by Saint John Paul II in 2002. So this is something that's always ever-evolving, just like the whole Catholic doctrine and faith is. They don't have a rock that they're just solid and saying, this is doctrine that's from the Bible that's always changing and evolving over the years, because the pope can just speak as, you know, this authoritative source that's on par with the Bible. They view what man says, and, you know, it has to be in his official capacity as being, you know, the pope on this earth, but when he says something, you know, it can essentially just be on par with scripture and even supersede scripture, because that's what they're doing. When they're contradicting the Bible, they're superseding scripture by saying, no, this is, you know what, that's a cult. That's the way a cult operates now. It may be a very, very, very, very big one, but when you've got a man just making these decisions of just, well, no, no, this is right, you know, changing what the Bible says and what the Bible teaches, you know, watch out for that. It's a scary place to be. So this article continues. It says, the repetition in the rosary is meant to lead one into restful and contemplative prayer related to each mystery. The gentle repetition of the words help us to enter into the silence of our hearts. Now, if you know anything about Eastern religions, Buddhism especially is one where you could chant these, and in Hinduism too, you chant these mantras, you just repeat things over and over again to get into the silence and a place of just having no thought and being empty, and this emptiness is this Eastern philosophy and mindset and religious practice that heathens do to get into this trance-like state, and they're saying, oh, yeah, this is what we do. They help us to enter into the silence of our hearts where Christ's spirit dwells. The rosary can be said privately or with a group. Now, like I said, this comes from the heathen practice of trying to blank out your mind completely, and then essentially it is just whatever is in your heart can come out. But see, with them, it's not Christ. So here's from catholic.org on how to pray the rosary. It says, so just how do you pray this rosary? First, the rosary of the most blessed Virgin Mary. It's the rosary of the most blessed Virgin Mary. So it's the rosary of Mary. First of all, it's saying, so this whole rosary thing is all about Mary. They're trying to say, oh, it's about Christ, and it's scripture-based, it's from the gospels, everything. It's the rosary of Mary. It says it's not the first rosary. In fact, the rosary goes back into the first centuries of the church. The early disciples took seriously Paul's admonition to pray without ceasing, and so they looked for ways to constantly keep the presence of God in their lives. But see, what they do is they take the admonition to pray without ceasing, which is in the Bible, and they turn that into, oh, you must just chant then over and over and over and over again. But we're going to see from scripture that that's not how you pray without ceasing. See, praying literally just means asking. And that's another concept that people don't even get. You can speak to God, and people call that prayer, but if you're not even asking for anything, you're not praying. Now look, there's nothing wrong with speaking to God and not asking for anything. You can give thanks unto the Lord. You can praise His name verbally, out loud, to God. But you're not asking for anything, right? So just keep that in mind when you're praying, you're going to God and asking for something. You communicate with God, you can talk to God and praise Him and everything else, but technically it wouldn't be called a prayer. But now obviously, commonly, any time you're communicating with God, we refer to that as prayer. But either way, even if you use that general sense, which I'm not saying is wrong, praying without ceasing still is communication. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't communicate with people by just chanting or repeating the same thing over and over and over and over and over again, unless maybe it's my little kid that's just not listening. But even then, you change it up a little bit, right? You go, look, don't do that, don't do that, don't, you know, hey, you do that again, whatever. You're going to have more words coming out. You're not just chanting the same thing over and over and over again. So you think God's in heaven just wanting us to just chant over and over and over again the same exact thing. Of course, that's not what pray without ceasing means. So this continues, it says, with the first rosary, the monks of the early church had a corded band. They would simply say the name of Jesus over and over and over and over again. Now, I don't know about you, but, you know, when I read the Bible, again, in the Ten Commandments, one of the Ten Commandments, not to take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain. If I'm just sitting somewhere and just going, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, and just repeating over and over and over again, I'm not even really talking to Jesus. I'm just using that name as a mantra to try to silence out my mind and not think about anything. But I'm not speaking to Jesus. That's using the name of God in vain. That's vanity. There is no real purpose for that. You're not talking to God. You're not addressing God. So don't just throw around His name as a mantra. They say the name of Jesus over and over and over again, Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me. Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me. Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me. And they'll say these things over and over and over and over again. But look down. We started off in Matthew chapter 6. This is the instruction of Jesus Christ about how to pray. In Matthew chapter 6, look at verse number 5, he says, and when thou prayest. So he's going to tell you what to do. When you pray, here's what you need to do. He says, thou shall not be as the hypocrites are. First of all, when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites. Don't be like the phonies. Don't be like these people that like to pray, standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets that they may be seen of men. Don't be like the phonies that just give these prayers because they want everyone to hear how good they are at praying and how eloquent they are and how much they could use their fair words and speeches to just sound all great and, wow, I want this person to pray because they're just so great with their words. He's saying, don't be like those hypocrites because that's why they're doing it. They just want to be heard of men and seen of men. He says, verily I say unto you, they have their reward. Yeah, guess what? That's all they're going to get from their prayers. It's worthless because all they're getting out of their prayer is being seen of men because God's not hearing them, so they get their reward. Verse 6 says, but thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. He's saying you don't need to make a public show of it. It's communication with God, so what matters is that you are talking to God and you're praying to God that you're going in your closet. No one needs to see it because it ought to be real and from your heart. If it's real and from your heart, then who cares who sees it because that's not what it's about. Now this isn't teaching that any open prayer is wrong. We do open prayer here sometimes. Sometimes we'll specifically pray for someone who will pray for people as a church, right? But the whole point is that it's not that we don't do this prayer so, oh, you can see how spiritual and how holy we are. It's because we're actually trying to entreat the Lord with something. We're trying to seek Him for some area of need in our church or in our lives and that's why you do it. It's not this which, look at verse 7, he says, but when ye pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do. There's already people out there that just repeat things over and over and over again. They chant, they use vain repetitions over and over and over and over and over again. That's the heathen. The heathen do that. He says, don't be like them. For they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. And the Catholic Church is huge on this, whether it be for their indulgences, the rosary, you have to say this many Hail Marys, this many Our Fathers, and that's ultimately what the rosary is, by the way. It's you have to say this many Our Fathers, this many Hail Marys, all this work of just praying and chanting is really what it is, not even praying. You're chanting. And they think by their much speaking that God's just going to hear them, oh, and God's going to save America. And they honestly think when they pray the rosary, and this gets into their indulgences, they think that if you just keep chanting this, you could chant this for yourself, and you'll receive this extra forgiveness for things that you've done. And then you can pray for other people, and you just go through this whole list of how to pray the rosary, which we'll get into in just a little bit. You go through all these steps. And then people in purgatory who are being purged of their sins, you can help them get out of there faster, because you're making this chant. I mean, this is what they believe. Or you can pray for the country and pray the rosary and chant over and over and over and over again these things. Just chant, chant, chant, chant, chant, chant, chant. Say, oh, okay, well, now God's going to bless us. Now God's going to overlook and forgive some of our sins because we've done this. They think that their much speaking that God's going to hear them. When Jesus specifically said, that's not the case. I mean, this is completely against what Jesus taught. And in fact, the irony here is Jesus is teaching people how to pray right when he gets done saying, don't use vain repetitions. Don't repeat things over and over and over again. He says, be not ye therefore like unto them, for your father knoweth what things ye have need of before you ask him. After this manner, therefore pray ye. Then he says, our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. And he goes into what's known as the our father prayer. And what do they do with that? They repeat that. He says, don't use vain repetitions. Don't repeat over and over and over again. And he says, this is how you should pray. He says, after this, manner. Manner means the way that you kind of do things, but it's not, use these words exactly when you pray. And if you need to pray about anything, just use these words every single time and just repeat this. That's not what he's saying here, but that's what the Catholics do. I mean, I remember because, like I said, I was in a Catholic light church when I had a close family member pass away. I was younger and I was sad and I kind of didn't understand everything. And I wanted to pray to God and I had no idea how to do that. So what did I do? I repeated what we called, we call it the Lord's Prayer. We didn't call it an Our Father, right? So we call it the Lord's Prayer. But what did that do? Nothing. I mean, I wasn't even saved, but it was just basic chanting. And even then, I'm just thinking, like, I don't know what to do. So I just say this, but it just didn't do anything. It's just confusion. Why would it do anything? It doesn't make any sense. Obviously, what Jesus is doing here, he's trying to give them an example of, hey, when you speak to God, and I've gone through this in the past, I'm not going to do that this morning, of all the various elements of what he's saying to God by recognizing, hey, our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Like, your name is respected. It's just going to God with respect first and foremost, recognizing God for who he is, being very humble, and then entreating the Lord, being thankful for what you have, and then treating him for some things. God, please give us this day our daily bread. Thank you for feeding us and help us to be fed every day. Basically, it's basic needs. You're praying for these things, and you're showing respect all the way through. And again, without going into detail, he just explains, just pray like this, something like this. And that's what it's all about. Turn, if you would, to... I promise you, I'm not going to go through all these pages I'm flipping through. Turn to Jeremiah, chapter 7. I have way more than I need on here, but I copied and pasted everything from these websites. And I don't want to spend the majority of time going through how they do things, because we're going to look at what the Bible actually says. I'm going to point out some of the errors, but I also want you to be able to express to people, maybe you know someone who's Catholic or you run into someone who's Catholic, and they're big into it. Most Catholics you run into don't know much about Catholicism. They're Catholic because they were born to a Catholic family, and they go to church maybe once or twice a year, or if there's a wedding or a funeral, Christmas, Easter, and that's it. And that's a majority of Catholics. In this country, at least. I don't know what it's like in other countries. Maybe there's more devout people, but in general, Catholics are relatively easy to get saved, too. But sometimes you run across some that are a little bit more into their religion, a little bit more religious and spiritual with the Catholicism. And again, you need to understand that that's not a good thing. It's not a good thing. It's, oh, well, at least they're, you know, at least they're praying and they want to help. You know, like, look, they're praying to the wrong God. It's not a good thing. And it's actually going to make God angry if they're praying this rosary. So I'm going to keep reading here from this article. It says, But this rosary asks Our Lady to pray for us. It has deep historic roots in Christianity, dating back to the early centuries of the church. The church has always believed in the communion of saints. What that means is that those who are marked with the sign of faith and go home to the Lord are still joined to us. You get that? You're saying when people die and pass on that they're still joined to us. I don't even know how you're joined, even when they're here, what they mean by that. But that's what they call the communion of saints. And that's also part of the Apostles Creed. Now, this, I know for a fact, was different than what we were taught about the communion of saints. They believe something completely different. And this is why, though, they say, they pray for us. They pray with us. So this communion of saints, they just think that everyone who's ever passed on is still, it's like they're here with you and they can pray for you. And they're just like, it's like they didn't actually leave. And they're still part of the church because they believe the Catholic means universal. So they believe in this whole universal church and just that you're all joined together spiritually. And obviously every lie, especially by these false religions, have some element of truth to it. But they completely bastardize it and make it into something that's extremely wicked and false. And that's why I say even just praying to dead people or praying to these saints, praying to these other, you know, they call them saints, people who have passed on to do something for you and intercede for you like in heaven. And that's what they believe. And so here's the, and it says here, and so the early Christians always asked for Our Lady's intercession. And now we're going to talk about the form of prayer that does that so beautifully. So they're trying to say at the very beginning, oh, this is scripturally based. All this stuff. But I'm going to go through some of these step by steps and notice how many things are about Mary. So you start off with doing the form of the cross and the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And then you start with that first bead and you pray the Our Father. So you chant that Our Father that we were just reading about in Matthew chapter six that you're not supposed to chant. And then it says the next cluster has three beads and says the Hail Mary prayer is said on these three beads. You pray the three Hail Marys while meditating on the three divine virtues of faith, hope and charity. And then you do another three beads. Glory be. I'm going to. Yeah, we'll get through it. There's nine sections. We're on number five right now. On the next bead, which is a single bead, it says you announce the first divine mystery of contemplation. And then depending on the day of the week, there's one thing that you recite there. Step six. Now this will bring you to the first decade or set of 10 beads of the rosary. You will then pray 10 Hail Marys while contemplating the first mystery. And then step seven is after the 10th Hail Mary, you have completed the first of five decades, which make up a chaplet of the rosary. You now come to another single bead. At this point, you pray the glory be to the Father. Then on the same bead, pray the Oh, my Jesus, then on the same bead, announce the next or second mystery. And then in step eight says you will now come to the second decade or group of 10 beads. You will now pray the 10 Hail Marys while contemplating the appropriate mystery. So it's like, OK, in this bead, you're going to do this, this, this, this. And then you've got 10 more beads. You're going to be doing Hail Marys in between each one of these things. It's like you're doing these 10 Hail Marys and these Hail Marys. The the word that they use is Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. Jesus, Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. This is their prayer that they chant. More than anything else that they're doing on the rosary is they're just repeating that over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And I have all these other things and I'm not going to go through all this other stuff with the Our Fathers and the whatever. There's a lot there's a lot of different things. And it's too much. Like I said, I don't want to get in to all of this. But notice what I want to point out here is Hail Mary says Mary, the mother of God. Now, nowhere is the Bible ever referring to Mary as the mother of God. She has never given that title in scripture ever, not one time. Now, she was the human being mother of Jesus Christ. And Jesus is God, but she is not the mother of God. Because when you say mother of God, that implies that God came into being from someone else. That's what that implies. When you're saying mother of God, that's essentially what you're saying. As opposed to the understanding that the scripture gives us, it's not about Mary, it's about Jesus. The Holy Ghost conceived and He's called the Son of God. But let's turn, hold your place in Jeremiah 7 because I just want to point this out to you. And turn, if you would, to Luke chapter 1. Luke chapter 1, we're going to see Mary's place in scripture. Now look, I have nothing against Mary. She was a godly woman, which is why God chose her to be the vessel that He was going to use to bring Christ in this world. But when you think about it, God had to choose a human vessel to do this. And every human is imperfect and is a sinner. Mary's no exception to that. Mary was a sinful human being. Mary was not perfect. And there's no reason to elevate a human being to the status of God other than Jesus Christ because He is God. He's God and man. Mary was not God and man. And Jesus, she's not the mother of God because of her at all and she had nothing to do with that. In fact, the only reason that Jesus is called the Son of God, as we'll see in scripture, has nothing to do with Mary. It has to do with His Father, not Mary. Luke 1.26, verse 26, the Bible says, and this is kind of an overview of just how Mary fits in and how they just magnify this office, which doesn't even have an office, but this, you know, and when you read the whole Bible in general, Mary's not mentioned very often at all. Yet, every other thing they're doing in the rosary, it's like, ten Hail Marys, ten Hail Marys, ten Hail Marys, and it's just like, it's all about Mary. But look at verse 26 here in the Bible. We're going to see what the Bible says about Mary. And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in under her and said, Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. Now, amen. She's blessed among women. She receives a blessing, you know, that the person who's blessed, you know, the person who's blessing is greater than the person who's blessed, first of all. So she's being blessed among women, obviously being chosen as his vessel. Verse 29, and when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. She's like, well, that's kind of odd. Like, why are you greeting me this way? Because she doesn't know yet what she's been selected to do. Verse 30, an angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God. Great. But many people have found favor with God. She's not the only one. This isn't exclusive just to Mary finding favor with God. You could find other examples of people who have found favor with God. Noah found favor with God. Moses found favor with God. Abraham found favor with God, right? These are all, you know, other people in Scripture that found favor with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shall call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end. It's all about Jesus. He said, okay, well here's what's going to happen. Here's who Jesus is going to be, and this is who Jesus is, and Jesus is going to have this kingdom, and he's going to sit on the throne of David. Verse 34, Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. So why is it even that he's called the Son of God? Because the Holy Ghost is going to overshadow her and conceive in her womb. Because that's where the seed is coming from. It's coming from God, so he's going to be called the Son of God. So yeah, the Father, we're way more applicable to say the Father of God than Mary being the Mother of God. Because the only reason that he's going to be called the Son of God is because of the union with the Holy Ghost. Jump down to verse 41. The Bible says, And it came to pass that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost, and she spake out with a loud voice and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And again, this is a true statement. Of course it is. Like I said, I have nothing against Mary, but there's no reason to exalt someone and lift them up on a pedestal because she's been blessed of God. Nowhere does this say that she's this person who's going to intercede. Nowhere in the Bible does it say anything like that. This is completely made up and fabricated in the Catholic Church. Verse 43 says, And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? Now, the mother of my Lord is talking about her Lord and Savior, but it's not talking about the mother of God, right? When she says my Lord, anyone who's your boss, you know, Sarah called Abraham her Lord, and that's how she's referring to. Now, obviously it's the Lord Jesus Christ, and she's understanding that he's going to be the Savior and understands that, but when she says the mother of my Lord, she's not saying the mother of God. And that's a big key right there because this isn't the all caps L-O-R-D like Jehovah. This is just the lowercase Lord of being a boss or being a Lord. And that would be the only place that you could ever find anything. That's what I'm going over right now. This is the only one that would even come close to someone trying to twist the scripture to say, Oh, no, she is called the mother of God, but she's not. She's being referred to as the mother of my Lord should come to me, and it's my Lord being Jesus, but there's nothing extra special other than she's blessed to be that person that's chosen. That's it. Verse 44. For lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy, and blessed is she that believed, for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord. And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior, for he hath regarded the lowest state of his handmaiden. For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty and hath done to me great things, and holy is his name, and his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation. So who is Mary putting the focus on? Who is everybody putting the focus on? Him. On the Lord. He that is mighty hath done to me these great things, and holy is his name, and his mercy is on them that fear him. His mercy is on them that pray to me. That's not what she said. His mercy is on them that fear him. Yeah, she's blessed, and I'll say it. She's blessed. She was blessed of God. But that doesn't make her a mediatrix. That doesn't put her in a special position between you and God. That doesn't make her another savior, which is what the Catholics are going to her as. And quite honestly, with the focus so much by the Catholics and the Catholic Church being put on Mary, it actually impacts an entire culture of having women being put in charge because they always have to go to Mary, go to Mary, go to Mary, go to Mary as if Mary's in charge of everything, and then she'll go to people, but you can't go to them trying. And this has deeper impacts on culture, and you can see this on cultures that are heavily Hispanic on having the mom or the woman in the house kind of being the head of the house. You see it. I've seen it in Hispanic cultures. Now, look, there's a difference between having respect for mom, which everybody should have respect for mom, but then the mom kind of just running the show and is being in charge of everything, and the dad just takes a back seat to what the mom's doing and the mom wearing the pants and family and having... That's against what Scripture teaches. The Bible teaches that the husband is the head of the household. And I'm not going to get into Ephesians 5 today, but go ahead and read Ephesians 5, where the Bible plainly teaches the way things are going to be. And you start messing with the Scripture, and you end up getting a lot of areas screwed up in life, and this is just one of those areas. And there's nothing new under the sun. This whole concept of... Oh, I didn't want to skip this part. I'm skipping over all the rest of this stuff. But I am going to read this to you, too, because this is... I read this, and I thought this was crazy. This is also newer. I think this was from the 14th century, somewhere around that time. You know, the 1400s and the 1500s, somewhere in that time frame where this was... Because things are always added. I mentioned that before in the Catholic Church. Talk about superstition. And that's what... The Catholic religion is really just superstition. It's just people who are superstitious. They want to chant these things and think that it has some magic power, as opposed to just believing in the living God. Say, hey, God is real. God is powerful. You can actually communicate with God. You can go through Jesus. You can talk to the sun. You can get right with God by putting your trust in Jesus Christ, and now you can speak and communicate with God and ask God for what you need. Instead of having to jump through these hoops and have your good luck charms and chants and whatever kind of mystical, magical process that you think is going to help you and give you your good luck charm and light your candles that's going to keep you safe when you drive or wear your little thing around your neck that's going to supposedly have some force field around you. Look, that's folly. But this just goes to show these 15 promises of Mary to Christians who recite the rosary, and this is why we see things like this billboard out there is because people actually believe this stuff, and I'm going to read to you. I don't know if we'll get through all 15 or not, but you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about as soon as I start reading some of this. It says, Whoever shall faithfully serve me, serve me, talking about Mary, by the recitation of the rosary shall receive signal graces. I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the rosary. Now, if you're wondering where this came from, this came from some guy who claimed to have these visions of, like, seeing and hearing from Mary herself, and she's telling him these things. I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the rosary. Oh, well, then it just must be true. I mean, let's just recite the rosary then, right? I will get special protection, superpowers. The rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell. It will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies. It's like a magic potion. It's like I'm going to put on my special armor. It's like you're playing one of those role-playing games, and you come across this treasure chest. You're like, oh, cool, I got this advanced armor. Now it's going to be a lot less hit points when people try to attack me, right? So I've got this special armor by saying the rosary that even, you know, is powerful armor against hell. Well, I'm sorry you go to hell. I don't care what armor you're wearing. If you didn't put on the Lord Jesus Christ before you died, then no armor is going to save you from the power of hell. It will cause virtue and good works to flourish. It will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God. It will withdraw the heart of men from the love of the world and its vanities and will lift them to the desire of eternal things. Oh, that souls would sanctify themselves by this means, by this means being chanting the rosary. The soul which recommend itself to me by the recitation of the rosary shall not perish. Did you get that? Wicked as hell. Jesus said, whosoever believeth on me shall never perish. Mary apparently is saying here, and this isn't the real Mary. This is the vision of some devil that some Catholic priest, some pedophile saw and wrote down, the soul which recommend itself to me by the recitation of the rosary shall not perish. No, you will perish. And it goes on and on. I'll read one more. It says, whoever shall recite the rosary devoutly, applying himself to consideration of its sacred mysteries shall never be conquered by misfortune. Oh, it's like going to your crystal ball, to your witch. Oh, I want to have fortune. Well, you'll never have misfortune if you just chant this prayer. Here's your good luck charm. Just chant this prayer, you'll never have misfortune. God will not chastise him in his justice. He shall not by an unprovided death, if he be just, he shall remain in the grace of God and become worthy of eternal life. I'm sorry, none of you are worthy of eternal life. We're not worthy of eternal life. Jesus was the only one who was worthy of eternal life. The only way we could have it is through him. There's so many lies. And I'm not going to waste any more, because it would be just a waste of time at this point. You can hear how wicked this is. And it's the same level of wickedness all throughout these 15 promises to those who praise the rosary to pray the rosary. It's superstition at its finest. And the thing is, this sucks in people who want to have that feeling and that good luck charm to have something good happen in their lives. And I'm bringing this up to you so you understand just a little bit about it. If you run across people like this, obviously, look, we love people. We want them to get saved. I'm not teaching this just to disparage every prayer. You go, well, they don't believe like you, so who do you think you are? Look, we're going off of what the Bible says. And there's a lot of deceivers out there, and there's a lot of people who've been deceived, and we want them to get saved. And if you understand a little bit behind probably where they're at in their superstition, you can actually comfort them. Because when you bring them the gospel of Jesus Christ, most of the time, people get sucked into this stuff. I've seen it a lot. You usually see a lot of ladies who are buying their candles, and they're just trying to do everything they can for them, for their families. It's a lot of stress, and it's a lot of work. Because they're thinking that by doing all these things, they're going to keep people saved from going to hell in less time and prayer. Motivation is good in the sense that they're trying to do what's right. But when you preach the gospel unto them, and you make it clear, that could alleviate this whole pressure and stress of having to work your way to heaven. Because innately, everybody, I believe, understands that no matter how much good you do, you're never quite good enough, because you sin every day. Except for people who are so blinded by their pride. Generally speaking, the ones who have this type of an attitude that are clinging to this stuff, hey, we got to explain the gospel to them so they can understand, hey, you don't have to do all that stuff. That's actually a lie. That's actually not true. That's actually not found in scripture. Here, listen to what the Bible says. Praying to Mary isn't going to save you. That doesn't give you eternal life. That doesn't sanctify you. Jesus does. But we're going to look at Jeremiah chapter 7 and then Jeremiah chapter 44, because like I said, there's nothing new under the sun. This concept of worshipping a female god and making offerings unto a female god and doing these things is nothing new and just calling her the mother of God or, in many places, the queen of heaven. And in fact, there are Catholic churches that are called queen of heaven Catholic church. So that's not some obscure thing. Oh, they don't do that. They do. And let's see people who also worship the queen of heaven in the Old Testament. And let's see how God feels about that. Jeremiah chapter 7, verse number 8, the Bible reads, Behold, ye trust in lying words that cannot profit. Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery and swear falsely and burn incense on the bale and walk after other gods whom ye know not? And come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations. Which, by the way, these chants of prayers, these Catholics do this all the time. They're going to go out and live like hell and commit their fornications and drunkenness and adulteries, and then they think they're going to go and show up in God's house, and they're going to say their prayers and just be absolved of all that stuff, and they're going to say the little confessional, and then they're going to go off and just keep doing the same thing over and over again, and that God's going to be pleased with that somehow. And He's not. No, I'm not saying that to say, Oh, because you really have to get rid of the sin to be saved. No, you have to put your faith in Jesus to be saved. But I'll tell you what, God's not going to be pleased with you even as a saved person if you're just going out and living like hell. And you have this attitude of, Well, we're delivered to do all these abominations. Then God's going to judge. Look at verse 11. Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, even I have seen it, saith the Lord. But go ye now unto my place, which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel. He's saying, Oh, you think I won't judge for this? You think you could just get away with this? You think you could come in and defile my house? You think you could come in and just do whatever you want and I'm just going to look the other way? He says, Why don't you go check out Shiloh? Why don't you see what I did there? My people were judged there. And you know what? God does judge His people. So watch out for those that are not His people. Verse 13. And now because ye have done all these works saith the Lord, and I spake unto you, rising up early and speaking, but ye heard not, and I called you, but ye answered not. Therefore will I do unto this house, which is called by my name, wherein ye trust, and unto the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh. And I will cast you out of my sight as I have cast out all your brethren, even the whole seed of Ephraim. Therefore pray not thou for this people. Neither lift up cry nor prayer for them. Neither make intercession to me, for I will not hear thee. And this goes to my point earlier of this general concept. Oh, well, you're praying. That's a good thing. I mean, as long as you're praying, then that's great. And so many people have this attitude. Oh, well, I mean, that's good. Like, you're praying. You're praying for people. Well, you know what? Well, you know what? There's some times where God's saying, don't even pray for this people. Don't pray for them. Praying for everybody all the time isn't a good thing. It's not. Otherwise, then how could this be true? Therefore, pray not for this people. He says, I'm not going to hear you. And notice at the beginning when we started reading earlier in Jeremiah 7, it talks about them worshipping and serving Baal. And just keep that in mind because they don't think that they're worshipping Baal. They think they're worshipping someone else, but it's all called the Lord. It's still all done in his house. But they bring in these heathen practices and they end up just creating their own god. And it really is a false god that they're worshipping. But it's not always by name. The Bible makes it clear who it is. And sometimes they are just by name worshipping Baal. But we're going to see here, and let's just keep reading here, of who they're talking about because Baal can be a generic term for basically any false god. Look at... Let's keep reading. Where did we leave off here? Verse number 16, verse 17. Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough to make cakes to the queen of heaven and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger. So now he's talking about the queen of heaven. He says they make their cakes to the queen of heaven. And what is it that you go in and do every week at the Catholic church? They make the little cakes, right? The little wafers that you go and take and they call that communion where they think you're literally eating the body of Jesus Christ like physically as flesh and drinking his blood, which is bizarre in and of itself. But there's nothing new under the sun. They make these cakes to the queen of heaven. Verse 19. Did they provoke me to anger, saith the Lord? Did they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces? Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, behold, mine anger and my fury shall be poured out upon this place, upon man and upon beast, and upon the trees of the field and upon the fruit of the ground, and it shall burn and shall not be quenched. This was the beginning of the judgment being pronounced against them, but flip over to chapter 44 now. Jump ahead because now we're going to see things come to a head in Jeremiah chapter 44 about the queen of heaven. In this prayer unto the queen of heaven and making intercessions. We're going to start reading in verse number seven there as well. Jeremiah 44 verse seven. Therefore now, thus saith the Lord, the God of hosts, the God of Israel, wherefore commit ye this great evil against your souls to cut off from you man and woman, child and suckling out of Judah to leave you none to remain, and that ye provoke me unto wrath with the works of your hands, burning incense unto other gods in the land of Egypt, whether ye be gone to dwell, that ye might cut yourselves off, and that ye might be a curse and a reproach among all the nations of the earth. Have ye forgotten the wickedness of your fathers and the wickedness of the kings of Judah and the wickedness of their wives and your own wickedness and the wickedness of your wives, which they have committed in the land of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? They are not humbled even unto this day, neither have they feared nor walked in my law nor in my statutes that I set before you and before your fathers. Therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, behold, I will set my face against you for evil and to cut off all Judah, and I will take the remnant of Judah and they have set their faces to go into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, and they shall all be consumed and fall in the land of Egypt. They shall even be consumed by the sword and by the famine. They shall die from the least, even unto the greatest, by the sword and by the famine, and they shall be an execration and an astonishment and a curse and a reproach. That's pretty serious and pretty severe judgment coming from God being pronounced against his people. We're going to see why in just a minute. Verse 13, For I will punish them in the land of Egypt as I have punished Jerusalem, by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence, so that none of the remnant of Judah, which are gone into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, shall escape or remain, that they should return into the land of Judah to the which they have a desire to return to dwell there. For none shall return, but such as shall escape. Then all the men which knew that their wives had burned incense unto other gods, and all the women that stood by a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt and Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying, and we're going to read this in just a minute, but notice he's saying, Now the men are trying to defend their wives, and their wives are the ones burning incense unto other gods. So who are these other gods? Do you think of, I mean, I just think of right away, how about lighting candles? Lighting candles to other gods. Verse 16, As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken unto thee, but we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth to burn incense, remember it said before, unto other gods, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven. So those are the other gods, the queen of heaven. And to pour out drink offerings unto her as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings, and our princes in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, for then had we plenty of vittles, and were well, and saw no evil. So what they're trying to say is that, you know, we had stopped doing this practice of burning incense unto the queen of heaven, but nothing good has happened since then, and when we were doing it before, hey, everything was great. That's what they're trying to say. We were doing this before, everything was going so well for us, but now we stopped doing that for a little short time, and nothing good is happening to us. So we're just going to go back and do that again. And Jeremiah's going to explain why they're just completely wrong about this. Verse 19 says, and when we burned incense to the queen of heaven and poured our drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her and pour out drink offerings unto her without our men? So the wives were saying, weren't our men with us too? Verse 20, then Jeremiah said unto all the people, to the men and to the women, and to all the people which had given him that answer, and the incense that ye burned in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, ye and your fathers, your kings and your princes and the people of the land, did not the Lord remember them and came it not into his mind, so that the Lord could no longer bear, because of the evil of your doings and because of the abominations which ye have committed, therefore is your land a desolation and an astonishment and a curse without an inhabitant as at this day. Because ye have burned incense and because ye have sinned against the Lord and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord, nor walked in his law, nor in his statutes, nor in his testimonies, therefore this evil is happened unto you as at this day. He's saying, look, don't think it was so good in that day because you were burning incense. He says the destruction came because you were doing that. That's why you were judged. That's why the destruction came. So yeah, God was long-suffering and merciful for a while and gave you space to repent, but you didn't, so then he had to bring judgment, so don't go back looking and saying, oh, well, we must have been right with God then. No. This is why you were judged. So making these cakes to the queen of heaven and burning incense and lighting these candles and trying to pray the rosary and pray unto the queen of heaven, pray to the mother of God and say all these hello Marys, you know what it's going to do? It's going to bring destruction. It's going to bring God's judgment because God is a jealous God because our God is a consuming fire because God doesn't want any gods before him and we're supposed to be a country that's supposed to use the name of the Lord and you're going to use the name of Jesus Christ and then you're going to pray unto these false gods and burn incense unto these false gods and worship these false gods. You've made up this queen of heaven God. God doesn't like that and God's going to judge. So if people really care about America, you should be taking down those billboards that are saying to pray the rosary and destroy the rosary and burn all of these wicked instruments of worshiping false gods. This merry worship is not of God, it's of the devil. And they have so many excuses to try to explain why it's not idolatry, how they're not worshiping but I'll tell you this much, when anyone bows down to anything, that's worship. When you bow down, oh, no, no, it's just respect. Oh, no, no, I'm actually worshiping God but you're bowing down to a picture of Mary, an image, a graven carved image of stone. Oh, but that's not an idol. Yes, it is. You could try to play word games and semantics all day long but that's exactly what it is. You're bowing down, you're worshiping. You're praying to a statue, it's an inanimate object, first of all, and it's an idol. And I'll tell you this much, I don't think anybody in history ever probably believed that the actual physical object like literally was God. They're always icons, they're always representative but they're going to treat it as being so holy, like, oh, we need to reverence this and make sure it's kept real nice and neat and whatever but it's always symbolic. People want to try to tell you, oh, no, I don't really think that's a god so it's not an idol. Well, it's representative of your false god. I mean, that's what idolatry is. And what God's trying to demonstrate when he talks about it, hey, that's just rock and stone and silver and gold and it's inanimate, it doesn't do anything because when you're praying to that thing, that is all it is and any representation of it is a devil, not God. Verse 24, the Bible reads, and all the women hear the word of the Lord, all Judah, that are in the land of Egypt. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, saying, Ye and your wives have both spoken with your mouths and fulfilled with your hands, saying, We will surely perform our vows that we have vowed to burn incense to the queen of heaven and to pour out drink offerings unto her. Ye will surely accomplish your vows and surely perform your vows. Therefore hear ye the word of the Lord, all Judah, that dwell in the land of Egypt. Behold, I have sworn by my great name, saith the Lord, that my name shall no more be named in the mouth of any man in Judah in all the land of Egypt, saying, The Lord God liveth. Behold, I will watch over them for evil, not for good. And all the men of Judah that are in the land of Egypt shall be consumed by the sword and by the famine until there be an end of them. And one last place we're gonna turn, turn to Luke chapter 11. I'm gonna close on this. I went to Jeremiah because I want you to remember those passages or make note of them. If you ever come across a diehard Catholic and you wanna just show them, you know, the Mary stuff. Now obviously, first and foremost, I'm gonna say this because this goes with anyone of any religion. You know, you wanna focus on the gospel anyways. You always focus on the gospel. You know, the power of God is in God's word. But sometimes people just kind of won't let you do much talking. And again, we don't get into arguments and debates with people, especially when we go out door to door. But you may have family members. You may have people that you talk to more frequently or people on the job. And they're open to having talks with you. So it's good to kind of know some of this stuff and point them out and be like, Look, what do you think that they were doing here? Like, look at what the Bible says. Look at what the Bible says about Mary in Luke 1. And look what Jesus said as well in Luke chapter 11. And this is, we're gonna close off with this, when it comes to the status of Mary and who we should be praying to and things like that. And is she elevated? Is she not elevated? No, she's blessed among women and that's it. She was blessed among women. Now she's in heaven with every other saint that was sanctified through the blood of Jesus, not through her own righteousness, but through his righteousness. She is not someone that we pray to, just like no one. We don't pray to Peter or James or John or any of these men that have lived before. We pray to Jesus. But look at Luke 11, because someone else already had this attitude of wanting to honor the mother instead of honoring the son. Luke 11, 27 says, And it came to pass as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company, and notice it's always a woman, too, that wants to exalt the women above, you know, where the place should be and try to give them more power. And it was just like it was in Jeremiah 44, it was the wives that were behind all this stuff and the husbands were going along with it. And we start lifting up a goddess and making them become the main focus, then that's how everything is gonna kind of fall underneath. And it can be very subtle but look, that authority structure is not of God. It's not. And this is nothing against women, I'm just saying that you can see the ramifications, I mean, it's there in Scripture. You can see the pattern of it. I love women, but I love women being in their role, just like I love men being in their role. And women do a great work and a great service and Mary was very blessed to be chosen to be the mother of Jesus Christ and to be that vessel and to help nurture him and raise him and everything else, that God chose her to do that, amen. But let's not change the focus of Jesus to any other person. I mean, you can say, well, Joseph was his stepfather, Joseph was there to raise him and stuff, but we're not gonna exalt him either. He was in a blessed situation as well to be a part of that, as were the half-siblings of Jesus Christ. They were blessed just to be in the family with him, but it's all about Jesus. Luke 11, 27 says, it came to pass as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lived up her voice and said unto him, blessed is the womb that bare thee and the paps which thou hast sucked. So trying to bring more of the tension on, well, yeah, your mom's blessed, like more than Jesus. Notice that the way she's saying this, too, it's like Jesus is right there preaching and saying these things and then it's like, oh, but your mom is blessed. Now, look, no one, obviously there's a place to honor Mary just in the sense that she was blessed by God, but when Jesus is out preaching the word of God, you're not just gonna go and say like, oh, yeah, what you're saying is great, but you know what? Your mom's great. Like your mom, the paps which thou hast sucked, trying to belittle Jesus, like bringing up the fact that he was a baby at one point and had to nurse and trying to demasculate him in that sense when he's going around and teaching, and Jesus responds, look at how he responds to verse 28, but he said, yea, rather blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it. It's more about God. It's not about the woman. Look, this is Jesus' stance, this is Jesus' stance on Mary and how you view Mary and you don't elevate her in anything more than just being a human vessel, a human instrument that's used of God like so many, every other human being that's just an instrument of God used of God. Nothing more than that. And it couldn't be clearer in scripture. That verse right alone, that's a key verse. You can show people like, why do you pray to a woman where Jesus said, hey, you know what, it's actually better to just do the works of God. So I know people here, we don't have a problem with being Catholics. That's not the point of teaching this, right? It's to show a little bit about what they believe and to give you some references and you know what, maybe you do know people that you can talk to about this and just understand how wicked it is as well just because someone says they pray and oh, I pray this way and you pray that way. Look, it's not always a good thing. It's actually not a good thing. It's going to bring more anger from the Lord on this nation. Let's have a word of prayer. Dear Lord, we love you and thank you so much for your words. I pray that you please help us to teach and to preach and I pray that you please lead us to people who need to hear your word. We love people, Lord. We love the Catholics that are just trying to do their best to serve you but they're unsaved, Lord, and that you would lead us to them and we could help show them how their labor is in vain and that they don't really know you. Help us to show them that and help us to care for them enough to go through the gospel and unload their burden of sin that they're trying to carry because they're trying to pay for it through all their works and we know it's not true, Lord. Please bless this church and help us all to do more for you. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. All right, we're going to sing one last song before we're dismissed and Brother Peter's going to lead us in that last song. All right, church, if you can grab your handles and open up to song 232. Song 232, tell me the story of Jesus. Let's say that title one more time. Tell me the story of Jesus. Song 232. On the verse. Tell me the story of Jesus. Write on my heart every word. Tell me the story most precious, sweetest that ever was heard. Tell how the angels in forest sang as they welcomed his birth. Glory to God in the highest, peace and good tidings to earth. Tell me the story of Jesus. Write on my heart every word. Tell me the story most precious, sweetest that ever was heard. Fasting alone in the desert, tell of the days that are past. For since he was handed, yet was triumphant at last. Tell of the years of his labor, tell of the sorrow he bore. He was despised and afflicted, homeless, rejected and poor. Tell me the story of Jesus. Write on my heart every word. Tell me the story most precious, sweetest that ever was heard. Tell of the cross where he nailed him, writhing in anguish and pain. Tell of the grave where they laid him, tell how he lived in the hand. Love in this glory so tender, bigger than ever I see. Stay that me be one who whispered, love be the ransom for me. Tell me the story of Jesus. Write on my heart every word. Tell me the story most precious, sweetest that ever was heard. Amen, great singing. Thank you so much for coming, you guys. .