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1. I've often said that the Muslims were just tools in the Hands of God to punish the Christians for their sins during the rise of Mohammed & Islam. Because by that time, the 6th & 7th centuries, Christianity had become as idolatrous & as wicked & as corrupt as any kind of paganism, & their temples were filled with idols, statues of Mary & Joseph & blah blah! They just cleaned out the old pagan idols & put in new ones, that's all. That's all the Romans did. They even used some of the same old heathen temples for their churches. That's what the first Christian church building was in about 244 A.D., did you know that? It was not built, it was a former pagan Roman heathen temple! They just painted over the pictures & painted on new pictures.

2. They threw out all the old idols & made new ones! After all, they didn't want to put the poor idol-makers out of business! Making images & idols was big business in those days! They didn't want to put all those great Mediaeval artists out of business, they had to have work & it meant money. As the song goes, "Money, money‚ money makes the World go round!" So they gave them new business to paint new pictures & make new idols.—And not only that, they didn't want to put all the temple builders out of business or the Temple's Union would have howled! So the government put them to work building new temples, only now they were Christian temples instead of pagan temples.

3. Look how much was economic in the corruption of the Church, just to keep businesses going & people busy & furnish employment! Besides, they were just commanded by Caesar to become Christians. An early Emperor proclaimed, "From now on Rome is Christian!" Whether they got saved or not, they had to worship the Christian idols & the Christian God & worship in Christian temples, whether they liked it or not! Is that conversion? Is that Salvation?—No!

4. So no wonder it became such a Hell of a religion full of a bunch of rats who in secret were still worshipping their old gods & idols & only came to the temple because they had to & were compelled to, & only confessed that they worshipped God or Jesus & Mary because they were forced to! Just like the former Roman Emperors used to force'm to worship the old pagan gods, they turned around & started forcing them to worship Jesus! What kind of a Salvation is that? What kind of Christianity is that? That's not any good Christianity! They were just forced to worship even when they didn't want to. That wasn't changing hearts. Their hearts were just as black & wicked & filthy & corrupt as they were before, so there were corrupt people in the congregation & corrupt priests in the pulpit, all there only because they were forced to. They also had to have a new priesthood, so "Vonce you vas a pagan priest, now you iss a Christian priest!"

5. Remember that old story I used to tell about the Rabbi who got converted & invited the Priest who converted him to Christianity to dinner? The Priest got there on Friday night, & lo & behold, he had chicken for dinner! The Priest said, "Well, don't you know? You're not supposed to eat chicken on Fridays, Friday is something special, remembering our Lord's death, & therefore we don't eat meat on Friday!"—How self-righteous‚ holier-than–thou! "We only eat fish!" "Vell," said the Jewish Rabbi, "vhy don't you do vith dis chicken vhat you did vith me! Perform some kind of hocus–pocus & say, 'Vonce you vas a Jew, now you iss a Catholic!' Say to this chicken‚ 'Vonce you vas a chicken, now you iss a fish!'"

6. So vonce you vas a heathen temple, now you iss a Christian Church! They actually took some of the images, the actual idols‚ painted them over & called them Mary & Joseph, etc.! That's actual ancient history! It probably doesn't come out too much now because the Catholics wouldn't like it. But they had this beautiful statuary, gorgeous statues, & they didn't want to just throw'm all away. So any that they could possibly just paint over & change the pictures a little bit & call them Joseph, Mary or somebody else, they did! They didn't want to destroy all that beautiful classical art, so they just changed the expression or changed the rod to a cross or something like that. Well, the Catholics were guilty of a lot of that kind of corruption‚ so it's no wonder God sent the Muslims down on the Christians.—And no wonder God is going to send the Antichrist down on the Jews & Christians for their sins!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family