Several years ago I heard a Baptist pastor, who had ministered in the Salt Lake region as a church pastor describe the Mormon religion as Satan’s greatest counterfeit. And as I have indicated in the first part on this topic, he had justifiable reason for that identification.

However, Joseph Smith only showed up in the early 1800s, and Satan would not have held back his deceptions for so many centuries just for that so-called “latter-day revelation” of God’s failure to initiate a workable plan of salvation for mankind in the beginning.

Like that garden plot you spent so much time getting ready for the spring planting, the first thing that shows up are those devilish weeds that are trying to choke out anything desirable and worthwhile.

In that Matthew 16 passage where Jesus declared the beginning of His Church we find the beginning, also, of a parallel religious body that springs out of a humanistic foundation based on Peter, the pebble or stone (petras),and not the Rock or boulder (petra) of the deity of Jesus Christ as identified to Peter by the Spirit of God. Here is that passage:

“He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’

Simon Peter answered and said, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’

“Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven’” (Matthew 16:15-19).

It is interesting that the Holy Spirit led Matthew to precede this context with Jesus warning the disciples to beware of the “leaven” of the Pharisees and Sadducees, meaning their doctrine, which basically was the binding legalism of the law. That is, the human efforts, the performance of “flesh and blood” instead of faith as the means of pleasing God.

Then He shows that His deity cannot be known by human effort but only by revelation from God. That distinction is then made between the Rock of His true identification and Peter, a mere human of flesh and blood limitations. Yet, He puts in this mere human the keys to the kingdom of heaven and certain authority along with it. The meaning of this authority deserves a more lengthy discussion at a later time, and I will deal with it again in Part 3 of this series.

Before discussing my observations of doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church and their comparison with the Scriptures, I must say clearly that there are many, many beautiful and wonderful people in the Catholic Church.

The deceptions they are exposed to come from a higher spiritual order, from Satan himself. I mean no harm, no offense to innocent believers in that arena, but my intent is to highlight the Scriptures in comparison with that church’s doctrines and traditions that are claimed as equal to the Word of God.

I must also add that I am a layman, not a theologian, and one who is on the outside, looking into an organization that is centuries old. But, I might add, the Scriptures are even older, and I, as an outsider, can make an objective comparison and analysis of the issues.

Shortly after the Matthew 16 conversations about the identity of Jesus and the establishment of His church, He began to teach the disciples that He was going to Jerusalem where He would be killed and would rise again the third day. Peter did not like that idea and told Him so. Here is that passage:

“From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.

“Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, ‘Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!’

“But He turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men’” (Matthew 16:21-23).

When man injects his “flesh and blood” opinions and ideas into God’s plans and methods, God sees them as directly from Satan. And here, He says so, even as He looked into the face of Peter!

So when Jesus established His Church on the foundation of His deity, Satan also established his greatest counterfeit, based on the man, Peter. But the apostle Peter was not a party to it. The Roman Catholic Church apparently had no specific beginning date unless it began as the church at Rome, to which Paul wrote his epistle about the year A.D. 58.

If that entity was the roots of the later organization, then it became the Roman Catholic Church about A.D. 310 when Constantine incorporated it into the Roman government as its State Church. He allegedly had the Pope “baptize” the soldiers as they rode out to war by sprinkling them with a leafy branch as they rode under it.

When I walk into a Catholic Church, I see two things that are most prominent. One is a statue of a woman holding a baby, and the other is a cross with a figure of a person hanging in death upon it. It just recently came clear to me the subtle message thus presented: Both are silent witnesses of the dominance of mankind over deity, the deity of the son of God.

Satan has always wanted to display dominance over God in every way that he can—by displaying Jesus, the Christ child, in the care of a physical being, and Jesus, the man, dead at the hands of mankind. But God knows Satan’s time is coming, soon!

Some of the false doctrines and practices of the Roman Church and Scriptures to the contrary:

1. Worship of Mary as Co-redeemer and Deity. In Luke 1:38, after the angel had told Mary of God’s plan for her to bear the Holy One, she said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.” And in her song of joy, beginning at Luke 1:46, she exclaims this: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” (Mary also needed a savior.)

2. The perpetuity of Mary’s virginity. That is, she had no other children. Mark 3:32, however, says this: “And a multitude was sitting around Him, and they said to Him, ‘Look, Your mother andYour brothers are outside seeking You.’” Those who deny this to be a family seeking Him, say they were His “brothers in faith.”

However, they were distinguished from the multitude around Him. The clincher, though, is the apostle Paul, who called James “the Lord’s brother” in Galatians 1:19, where Paul also identified James as an apostle: “But I saw none of the other apostles except James,the Lord’s brother.”

3. The doctrine of transubstantiation. This was invented by Augustine (A.D. 354-430), who also was the early proponent of the worship of Mary and her continual virginity. The practice maintains that in Communion (the Mass), the wafer mysteriously turns into the actual body of Christ and the wine into His blood, thus solving the problem found in John 6:54 where Jesus says, “Whoever eats Myflesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”

This statement, for the Catholics, is the basis for the belief that if the wafer and the drink are not taken regularly, the member loses his salvation. Jesus expands on it in the context, and in John 6:63, He says this: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.”

By this clarification from the Lord, Himself, even if the wafer and drink did become the flesh and blood of Christ, it would not transfer any spiritual benefit to the partaker (i.e. “the flesh profits nothing”). The only truly spiritual thing we have, which is also physical, is the inspired Word of God, the living Word. Augustine again injected “flesh and blood” into God’s business and produced a corrupted and false doctrine.

4. Salvation is accomplished by baptism (sprinkled) and joining the Catholic Church, and maintained by regularly partaking of the communion sacrament described above. They maintain that baptism in the church is essential for eternal life. However, for example, when the Philippian jailer cried out, “What must I do to be saved?,”

Paul answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved…” (Acts 16:31). He and his family, who also believed, and so, they were baptized. Many other verses and passages make no mention of baptism when discussing the way of salvation. (See John 5:24, John 6:37-38, Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 10:9-10, and 1 John 5:11-13.)

5. Purgatory, the doctrine of “half-way house” purging of sins before getting to heaven. Payments to priests for prayers to speed up the purging process have brought millions into the church over the centuries.

However, the sins of true believers have already been purged by the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, followed by His resurrection. This doctrine negates the truth of that one sacrifice. For the unsaved person, Hebrews 9:27 tells us, “And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment….” No stopping off place there at all! There is a judgment for the believer, but it is not regarding salvation. See 2 Corinthians 5:10 and 1 Corinthians 3:11-15.

Also, in the account of the rich man and Lazarus, in Luke 16:19-31, Jesus said there was a “certain” rich man and a “certain” beggar (named Lazarus), indicating real people. The rich man died and went directly to a place of torment without hope of deliverance, while the beggar, being pictured as with favor from God, went to the Paradise of “Abraham’s bosom.” No “half-way houses” here, either!

Remember that the Roman Catholic Church is founded on Peter, the pebble, not Jesus Christ—the Rock, or boulder of truth that “favors the things of God and does not favor the things of men,” as Matthew 16:23 tells us.

There are more “devious doctrines” to uncover in this list as well as in other man-made religious practices, and we will continue the process in Part 3.

When Jude wrote his short epistle, he apparently intended to write about our common salvation but was impressed by the guiding hand of the Holy Spirit to exhort believers on the necessity to hold fast to the principles of faith that were first delivered to those earliest of the believers by the apostles. In Jude 1:3 he writes this:

“Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.”

To “contend for the faith” would mean to withstand forcefully against any kind of deviation from that body of faith that was laid out by Jesus and those earliest of the followers of Christ, meaning the apostles, most certainly. Many Bible students and teachers harken back to the “early church fathers,” but I contend that the earliest of the “church fathers” were those writers whose accounts formed the New Testament. And that must be the basis from which we would “contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.”

The “once for all” phrase in that verse tells us that the truths were, at the first, laid out without any intent for future changes to be made by further “enlightenment” discovered by new revelations. A definitive phrase that occurs several times in the New Testament is “flesh and blood,” as in these examples:

1 Corinthians 15:50 – “…flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God….”

Ephesians 6:12 – “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

Those two quotes tell us that mortal flesh and blood cannot have any part of spiritual matters; that is, the offspring of Adam have no part in God’s plans. Likewise, when man, ruled by the spirit of Adam, deviates from the truth and develops false doctrine, we are fighting against spiritual foes and not flesh and blood people when we “contend for the faith that was once delivered to the saints.”

When Jesus announced the foundation of His Church based on the Rock of His deity, He made that distinction. Matthew 16:15-18 tells us of that distinction:

“He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered and said, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’

“Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.’”

The implication here, with the two above quotes as backup, is that “flesh and blood” could not have uncovered the truth that was revealed to Peter. Mankind is totally dead in sin and cannot penetrate that wall of separation from spiritual matters. This is confirmed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:11b:

“Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.”

The rock on which Jesus builds His Church is the Rock (petra, or boulder) of Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the deity in human form. Peter, however, is the petros, or pebble, who is to have responsibilities for that Church Jesus has founded.

It is here that many “devious doctrines of diabolic deception” have their beginning.

A “deviant” is one who is devious in his actions and is defined as a person or thing that deviatesor departs markedly from the accepted norm. In this writing I will have in mind that term in regard to those teachings and practices that vary from the Word of God. And in regard to “doctrines,” I will think of it in its simplest form, as applying to truth, itself, as presented in the word of God.

The meaning of the word “devious” in this article’s title is described as “showing a skillful use of underhanded tactics to achieve goals.” Individual words that describe it are “underhanded,” “deceitful,” “dishonest,”dishonorable,” to list a few. Motives behind false doctrines likely vary, but it is clear that they all stem from that father of lies, the devil, himself.

Thus it is diabolic deception to undermine the truth of God’s Word and the purity of His gospel of salvation, even to mislead a seeker of eternal life instead to an eternal hell.

What are the basic fundamental doctrines that are revealed in that Matthew 16 passage?

· The true church is founded by Jesus Christ without any input by “flesh and blood.”

· Mortal man cannot comprehend it.

· Its victory over evil is eventually certain.

· Any deviation from the deity that is identified in its foundation produces a false doctrine.

· Its true enemy is not mankind but Satanic spiritual forces.

It is interesting how falsehoods clamor urgently to be recognized and accepted as true in the public eye. The Mormons long to be known as legitimate Christians, yet their doctrines contradict the Bible’s longstanding truths. Any evidence presented to them is rejected as inaccurate interpretations or even laughed off as inconsequential and meaningless. That is the general response when Galatians 1:8-9 is referred to, giving the apostle Paul’s position on any “new revelation” from “heaven,” as that passage shows:

“But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.”

Hidden down inside their doctrinal details is the teaching that up in heaven, before things began to unfold here on earth, Jesus had a brother named Lucifer. When they, with God, the Father, (who was once a man and rose in rank to become god of this world system, which is among many such world systems having their own god in charge) when they saw the trouble mankind was into here on earth, the two brothers drew straws as to who would come down and provide a means of salvation for man.

Jesus drew the short straw, so to speak, and this is the Jesus they promote as the basis of Christianity, the brother of Lucifer. Problem is, we know who Jesus is and who Lucifer is, and those two are absolutely not brothers! (But this account will not be disclosed at the first few indoctrinating sessions for their new convert. It’s much too radical, too non-biblical, too diabolical, too “Luciferian.”)

Despite scientific evidence that refutes their claims of historical truth for the Book of Mormon, it doesn’t seem to impact them hardly at all. Lack of archeological evidence of the existence of any of the cities named in the Book of Mormon should speak volumes to anyone with an open mind, but that is the way of deception. The claim that the original native Americans were actually the lost tribes of Israel has been determined false by DNA scientists, who found no link between the two people-groups. Again, the findings are largely ignored.

Evidently, promoters of deception think it is more spiritually impressive if Old King James Bible language is used in choice of translations or quotations. This is not my attempt to degrade the King James Version translation, but to suggest that the “thees” and “thous” of ancient England are not more spiritual than the simple language of today’s conversations in whatever language used. Joseph Smith “translated” his Book of Mormon from those “golden plates” in King James English, perhaps thinking that was the language of the kingdom of God.

The Mormons are not alone in deceptive tactics. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have produced their own Bible version that relegates the only begotten Son of God to a son of God, thus attempting to destroy the proclaimed deity of Jesus, the Christ. Twisting the Scriptures to quote favorable support for their doctrines of deception is a common tactic.

Those who embrace a false doctrine are harder to convince of the truth than changing the mindset of an atheist, as one Bible teacher says he has realized over the years. They are emphatic in their declarations, quoting Scriptures out of context, interpreting them inconsistent with their context and loudly denouncing their opponents.

A major source of deceptive doctrines is found in the doctrines and traditions of the Roman Catholic Church. In Part 2 that establishment will be considered from the standpoint of an outsider telling what he sees that is in contradiction to the Scriptures. And there are other deceptions that need to be addressed as well.