Marian Apparitions Debunked
Another attack that Roman Catholics have done against Baptist Christians and their fellow non-Baptist Christians is that they have apparitions to see while Baptist Christians and non-Baptist Christians have none. However ignored is this of Jesus Christ saying in Mark 8:12, "And He sighed deeply in His Spirit, and saith, Why doth this generation seek after a sign? verily I say unto you, There shall no sign be given unto this generation." How true. The Apostle Paul also write, "For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:" in which for one, puts the apparitions under question. This is not meant to insult Roman Catholics but a wake up call for them.
So how is this going to be put to the test? Okay the Jews had apparitions but NONE of them contradicted the Word of God. The Captain of the LORD's Host (the Lord Jesus Christ) that appeared to Joshua did not contradict the Word of God. However 2 Corinthians 11:14 warns that Satan can appear as an angel of light to twist the doctrine and that's what's happening. Only if Roman Catholics will just check their Bible and find out something is NOT right.
The so-called "Mary" of the apparitions is NOT the Mary of the Bible and here are a few examples why taken from the appearances of the "Our lady" with just one apparition, the "Our Lady of Fatima" which heresies will be underlined:
Note: The Mary that this ministry is going against is not the earthly mother of Jesus but rather, an imposter Mary. This "Mary" is NOT the Mary who born-again Christians love, respect and follow her good example but NEVER pray to her!
"The general Message of Fatima is not complicated. Its requests are for prayer, reparation, repentance, and sacrifice, and the abandonment of sin. Before Our Lady appeared to the three shepherd children, Lucy, Francisco and Jacinta, the Angel of Peace visited them. The Angel prepared the children to receive the Blessed Virgin Mary, and his instructions are an important aspect of the Message that is often overlooked."
"The Angel demonstrated to the children the fervent, attentive, and composed manner in which we should all pray, and the reverence we should show toward God in prayer. He also explained to them the great importance of praying and making sacrifices in reparation for the offenses committed against God. He told them: 'Make of everything you can a sacrifice and offer it to God as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and in supplication, for the conversion of sinners.' In his third and final apparition to the children, the Angel gave them Holy Communion, and demonstrated the proper way to receive Our Lord in the Eucharist: all three children knelt to receive Communion; Lucy was given the Sacred Host on the tongue and the Angel shared the Blood of the Chalice between Francisco and Jacinta."
"Our Lady stressed the importance of praying the Rosary in each of Her apparitions, asking the children to pray the Rosary every day for peace. Another principal part of the Message of Fatima is devotion to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, which is terribly outraged and offended by the sins of humanity, and we are lovingly urged to console Her by making reparation. She showed Her Heart, surrounded by piercing thorns (which represented the sins against Her Immaculate Heart), to the children, who understood that their sacrifices could help to console Her."
"The children also saw that God is terribly offended by the sins of humanity, and that He desires each of us and all mankind to abandon sin and make reparation for their crimes through prayer and sacrifice. Our Lady sadly pleaded: 'Do not offend the LORD our God any more, for He is already too much offended!'
"The children were also told to pray and sacrifice themselves for sinners, in order to save them from hell. The children were briefly shown a vision of hell, after which Our Lady told them: 'You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace."
"Our Lady indicated to us the specific root of all the troubles in the world, the one that causes world wars and such terrible suffering: sin. She then gave a solution, first to individual people, then to the Church’s leaders. God asks each one of us to stop offending Him. We must pray, especially the Rosary. By this frequent prayer of the Rosary, we will get the graces we need to overcome sin. God wants us to have devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and to work to spread this devotion throughout the world. Our Lady said, 'My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God.' If we wish to go to God, we have a sure way to Him through true devotion to the Immaculate Heart of His Mother."
"In order to move ever closer to Her, and therefore to Her Son, Our Lady stressed the importance of praying at least five decades of the Rosary daily. She asked us to wear the Brown Scapular. And we must make sacrifices, especially the sacrifice of doing our daily duty, in reparation for the sins committed against Our Lord and Our Lady. She also stressed the necessity of prayers and sacrifices to save poor sinners from hell. The Message of Fatima, to individual souls, is summarized in these things."
On the same website, there is recorded an interview between Sister Lucy (the 10 year-old shepherd girl who was among the three children who saw the apparitions in 1917) and a Father Fuentes. The interview took place in 1957. In this interview focusing on Fatima and its message, Sister Lucy says the following:
"Father, the devil is in the mood for engaging in a decisive battle against the Blessed Virgin, and the devil knows what it is that most offends God, and which in a short space of time will gain for him the greatest number of souls. Thus the devil does everything to overcome souls consecrated to God, because in this way the devil will succeed in leaving the souls of the faithful abandoned by their leaders, thereby the more easily to seize them."
"Father, the Most Holy Virgin did not tell me that we are in the last times of the world, but She made me understand this for three reasons. The first reason is because She told me that the devil is in the mood for engaging in a decisive battle against the Virgin. And a decisive battle is the final battle where one side will be victorious and the other side will suffer defeat. Hence from now on we must choose sides. Either we are for God or we are for the devil; there is no other possibility."
"The second reason is because She said to my cousins as well as to myself, that God is giving two last remedies to the world. They are the Holy Rosary and devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. These are the last two remedies which signify that there will be no others."
"The third reason is because in the plans of Divine Providence, God always, before He is about to chastise the world, exhausts all other remedies. Now, when He sees that the world pays no attention whatsoever then, as we say in our imperfect manner of speaking, He offers us with a certain trepidation the last means of salvation, His Most Holy Mother. It is with a certain trepidation because if you despise and reject this ultimate means, we will not have any more forgiveness from Heaven, because we will have committed a sin which the Gospel calls the sin against the Holy Ghost. This sin consists of openly rejecting, with full knowledge and consent, the salvation which He offers. Let us remember that Jesus Christ is a very good Son and that He does not permit that we offend and despise His Most Holy Mother. We have recorded through many centuries of Church history the obvious testimony which demonstrates by the terrible chastisements which have befallen those who have attacked the honor of His Most Holy Mother, how Our Lord Jesus Christ has always defended the honor of His Mother."
"The two means for saving the world are prayer and sacrifice. [Regarding the Holy Rosary, Sister Lucy said:] Look, Father, the Most Holy Virgin, in these last times in which we live, has given a new efficacy to the recitation of the Rosary to such an extent that there is no problem, no matter how difficult it is, whether temporal or above all spiritual, in the personal life of each one of us, of our families, of the families of the world or of the religious communities, or even of the life of peoples and nations, that cannot be solved by the Rosary. There is no problem, I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary. With the Holy Rosary we will sanctify ourselves. We will console Our Lord and obtain the salvation of many souls. "Finally, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, our Most Holy Mother, consists in considering Her as the seat of mercy, of goodness and of pardon, and as the sure door of entering Heaven."
Comment to the statement above:
Looking at the utter blasphemy above, the flaws above have been underlined and can be refuted with the Bible.
1.) First and foremost to receive the blessed Virgin Mary- That is UTTER nonsense. Nowhere in Scripture is that people receive the blessed virgin Mary but they do receive Jesus. Mary only said in John 2:5- "Do whatever He tells you." Jesus never at one instance invited people to His earthly mother.
2.) Again, Mary is NOT sinless. Mariolatry has its own crazy ideas about Mary in which she would definitely never approve.
3.) Man CANNOT add or diminish anything to what Jesus had done on the cross. What He did was sufficient to atone for sins. Hebrews 9:11-22 shows that He paid it all. John 19:30 says, "It is finished."
4.) The Rosary as a means to overcome sin? That's another fact that can be disproved with real facts. It's no surprise that many Roman Catholics who pray the Rosary are living sinful lives. Based on observation, many of them are unfaithful to their wives, into gambling, womanizing, drinking and narcotics just to name a few. By even going as far as to say that no problem cannot be solved by the Rosary again is STUPID. A good example should be how Roman Catholic governments operate and MANY are also Communists. Former Roman Catholics turned Christians can give out an example of how the Rosary ruined their lives and how faith in Jesus Christ alone fixed them!
5.) Battle against Mary? Has Mary REALLY taken over Heaven and that it is a sin against the Holy Spirit to reject her as the only means of salvation? Absolutely not. This has become one of the biggest accusations done against Baptists is that they are fighting against Mary. What Baptists are doing by debunking the strange ideas about Mary and trusting Christ alone is showing true love to her while people who worship her and rely on her are actually hating her without knowing it!
6.) Devotion to the immaculate heart of Mary is another crazy thing and again, found nowhere in the Bible. By stating that Mary gets hurt by the sins of the world and that she is immaculate, is a contradiction to the fact that Mary knew she was a sinner and acknowledged her need for the Savior. First, Mary has to be born of a virgin too which she isn't. She is still a sinner but saved by grace. Second, Mary is not God and Roman Catholics say they do not adhere to the Mary is God heresy but, by their actions they are putting her above God. The Rosary is one example which will also be presented. Images of Mary are abominable not only to Mary, but also to God. Why an abomination unto Mary? Mary is a faithful follower of God and she would NEVER add or subtract anything not in Scripture! Devotion to her does not please her, it only breaks her heart!
7.) Salvation CAN NEVER be through Mary. Why? Again, Jesus said in John 14:6, "I Am the Way, the Truth and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father EXCEPT through Me." That is, Jesus was clear nobody comes to the Father but by Him. To even call Mary the "sure door" is blasphemy. Why? Jesus said in John 10:1-7 saying, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice. And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers. This parable spake Jesus unto them: but they understood not what things they were which he spake unto them. Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I Am the Door of the sheep. 8All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." So again, did Jesus say, "My mother is the door of the sheep?" Nope. Again, when Jesus said, He is... He means it. Jesus MEANS business in everything and to add anything but simple faith in Him (which results to works as a result of being saved) to be saved is a mockery of what He did.
8.) The world is already getting conditioned to receive the Antichrist. Satan has been posing as "Mary" and by promoting a false messiah, the world will receive the Antichrist as the "savior" of the world. Sad but true. We pray this message reaches Roman Catholics everywhere before it's too late for them!