ONE OF THE BIGGEST “RED PILLS” BEHIND MY CONVERSION: THE PROTESTANT-MORMON CONNECTION

One of the biggest “red pills” behind my conversion was realizing that the vast majority of protestants (I was one of them) had virtually the same theology of history as Mormons, and we didn’t even realize it. I found the consequences of this to be extremely disturbing (read to the end).

My thoughts are explained in greater detail in the article linked below, but here’s the summary.

The LDS (Latter-Day Saints) Church teaches that after the death of the last Apostle, the authority of the priesthood and the keys was lost. As a result, Christians fell into deeper and deeper error, and the true faith was lost. They call this the “Great Apostasy.”

Many protestants—often not realizing it (historical ignorance)—believe basically the same thing. This was one of the most sobering conclusions I came to in my final days as a protestant, and helped lead to my conversion.

Here’s why.

To have any religion whatsoever, you must, at minimum, have three doctrines:

—#1: How you join the religion (initiation);
—#2: How the members of the religion govern themselves, who has authority, etc. (government); and
—#3: How the religion worships whatever deity/deities it acknowledges.

Without these three, it’s arguably impossible to claim you even have a religion.

On these three mattes, the Church Fathers—meaning, the Christian leaders of whom we have any record from the earliest days of the Church through roughly the first millennium—are UNANIMOUS.

They UNANIMOUSLY believed in:

—#1: Baptismal regeneration (how we become Christians);
—#2: Apostolic succession (how the Church is governed); and
—#3: The sacrifice of the Eucharist (how Christians worship).

Giving as much credit as possible, Anglicans, and some Lutherans, are the two biggest sects who believe in #1 AND #2. However, even if we say ALL of them believed in both (which is not true), together, they constitute only about 20% of worldwide protestantism.

All protestants reject #3.

Thus, the vast majority of protestants reject all three of these fundamental Christian doctrines upon which the ancient Church was unanimous, and are absolutely essential to having a religion of any kind whatsoever.

That means the vast majority of protestants believe—whether they realize it or not (I used to be among the vast majority who didn’t realize it)—that from the very first generation after the Apostles forward, all Christians got it wrong on how we become Christians; how the Church is governed; and how Christians worship.

In other words—often out of historical ignorance, not realizing the unavoidable conclusion of their doctrines—they must believe Christians got the essence of their religion wrong, that it got worse and worse through time, and this began right after the death of the last Apostle.

While they often do not have this specific intention in mind, this nonetheless means their theology of history is virtually identical with that of the Mormons.

While this is absurd for various reasons, here is where it gets very disturbing.

If this is true—that the fundamentals of Christianity were essentially lost from the first post-Apostolic generation, but have been available in one form or another for the 500 years since the “reformation”—then this conclusion necessarily follows:

What God in the flesh established in the first century was weaker than what men like Luther, Calvin, and the like, re-established in the 16th century.

I made the same objection to Mormon missionaries who visited me for several weeks. “If your religion is true,” I said, “then what Christ Himself established was weaker than what Joseph Smith re-established.”

As disturbing as I found this conclusion about the nature of my own protestantism, it was nonetheless true in light of the facts of history.

I realized I had been deceived by a religious system that had surreptitiously claimed to achieve something greater than even the Apostles. You can read the full article here.

joshuatcharles.com/blog/2023/8/18…

FEAST DAY OF THE DISCIPLE OF THE APOSTLES WHO LED ME TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH—HERE'S WHY

Today (October 18) is the Feast Day of my Confirmation Saint, St. Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of the Apostle John.

I affectionally call him "St. Ignatius the Red Pill," because when, as a protestant, I opened the first volume of the earliest Church Fathers and began reading his writings—written around AD 107—I was utterly shocked by how Catholic they were. He wrote them in several letters to various churches and friends (like St. Polycarp) on his way to be martyred in Rome (traditionally at the Colosseum).

After reading his letters, I knew I had to get to the bottom of things. St. Ignatius of Antioch truly shocked me out of my protestant stupor, and began breaking through all the lies and falsehoods about the Catholic Faith and Church I had been told my whole life—including not only the assertion that various Catholic doctrines were unbiblical, but that the early Church was protestant. Nonsense! St. Ignatius began the process by which I realized that Catholic doctrine was not only biblical, but extremely biblical; and the Catholic Church was the one true Church from day one.

Two years later, I came into full communion with the Catholic Church.

St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote very strong words about:

· The Eucharist being the same Body and Blood of Christ that suffered for our sins;
· The authority of the priesthood, especially bishops;
· The necessity of Church unity through communion with and obedience to the bishop around the one altar through the Eucharist;
· Christian worship being the sacrifice of the Eucharist;
· The name of Christ’s one true Church being the “Catholic Church” (St. Ignatius was the first to use this term, “Catholic” simply meaning “according to the whole,” or “universal,” to distinguish the true Church from all the heresies and schisms that had already begun to spring up);
· The three primary offices of the clergy were: bishops, priests, and deacons;
· The necessity of obeying the clergy, especially the bishops, without whom there is no Church;
· The danger of heresy and schism from the one true Church, which lead to loss of salvation;
· Salvation as being acquired by faith and works (the free gift of spiritual rebirth obtained by faith, and its attendant obligation to work righteousness and endure to the end to be saved);
· The reality that Christians can lose their salvation (St. Ignatius asks for prayers for him so that he would not lose his own);
· That the Roman Church “presides in love” (a mysterious but very unique phrase he applies to no other Church), and teaches and commands other churches (a description St. Ignatius does not apply to any of the five other churches he writes to);
· Etc.

Many of his doctrines not only directly contradicted virtually every protestant theology out there, but it aligned with the theology of the Catholic Church as taught to this very day. Again, this was all the more remarkable given that he was a disciple of an Apostle, St. John.

Here are some of the main quotes from each of his seven letters that really struck me, as a protestant, and lit a fire in my heart for the love and truth of Christ that wasn't quenched until I discovered and accepted the truth of the Catholic Faith, and full Christian communion in the Catholic Church. LETTER #1: ST. IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH, “LETTER TO THE EPHESIANS” (§§2-7, 9, 13-14, 16-17, 20)

Obey the Bishop and Priests
(§2) …It is therefore befitting that you should in every way glorify Jesus Christ, who hath glorified you, that by a unanimous obedience “you may be perfectly joined together in the same mind, and in the same judgment, and may all speak the same thing concerning the same thing,” and that, being subject to the bishop and the presbytery, you may in all respects be sanctified.

Remain Unified Around the Bishop, the Altar, and the Eucharist
(§3) …But inasmuch as love suffers me not to be silent in regard to you, I have therefore taken upon me first to exhort you that you would all run together in accordance with the will of God. For even Jesus Christ, our inseparable life, is the [manifested] will of the Father; as also bishops, settled everywhere to the utmost bounds [of the earth], are so by the will of Jesus Christ.

(§4) Wherefore it is fitting that you should run together in accordance with the will of your bishop, which thing also you do. For your justly renowned presbytery, worthy of God, is fitted as exactly to the bishop as the strings are to the harp. Therefore in your concord and harmonious love, Jesus Christ is sung. And do you, man by man, become a choir, that being harmonious in love, and taking up the song of God in unison, you may with one voice sing to the Father through Jesus Christ, so that He may both hear you, and perceive by your works that you are indeed the members of His Son. It is profitable, therefore, that you should live in an unblameable unity, that thus you may always enjoy communion with God.

(§5) For if I in this brief space of time, have enjoyed such fellowship with your bishop —I mean not of a mere human, but of a spiritual nature—how much more do I reckon you happy who are so joined to him as the Church is to Jesus Christ, and as Jesus Christ is to the Father, that so all things may agree in unity! Let no man deceive himself: if anyone be not within the altar, he is deprived of the bread of God. For if the prayer of one or two possesses such power, how much more that of the bishop and the whole Church! He, therefore, that does not assemble with the Church, has even by this manifested his pride, and condemned himself. For it is written, “God resists the proud.” Let us be careful, then, not to set ourselves in opposition to the bishop, in order that we may be subject to God.

Respect the Bishop as Christ Himself, Avoiding Heresies
(§6) Now the more anyone sees the bishop keeping silence, the more ought he to revere him. For we ought to receive everyone whom the Master of the house sends to be over His household, as we would do Him that sent him. It is manifest, therefore, that we should look upon the bishop even as we would upon the Lord Himself. And indeed Onesimus himself greatly commends your good order in God, that you all live according to the truth, and that no sect has any dwelling-place among you. Nor, indeed, do you hearken to anyone rather than to Jesus Christ speaking in truth.

(§7) For some are in the habit of carrying about the name [of Jesus Christ] in wicked guile, while yet they practice things unworthy of God, whom you must flee as you would wild beasts. For they are ravening dogs, who bite secretly, against whom you must be on your guard, inasmuch as they are men who can scarcely be cured.

Warning Against Heresy
(§9) Nevertheless, I have heard of some who have passed on from this to you, having false doctrine, whom you did not suffer to sow among you, but stopped your ears, that you might not receive those things which were sown by them, as being stones of the temple of the Father, prepared for the building of God the Father, and drawn up on high by the instrument of Jesus Christ, which is the cross, making use of the Holy Spirit as a rope, while your faith was the means by which you ascended, and your love the way which led up to God…

(1/2) BAPTISM: THE REASON PROTESTANTS GET SO MUCH OF SCRIPTURE WRONG

Two-part thread (the tip of the iceberg on this topic).

Scripture and the ancient Church are crystal clear about how we are saved through faith, through no works of our own: being reborn, regenerated, in baptism. It was a completely free, unmerited gift of God’s love and grace.

One of the key reasons protestants butcher various prooftexts from Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, etc. is because they have lost the glorious truth of the new birth in baptism, and why God gave it to us. Because they have lost this truth, they’ve lost many others about the reality of Christians falling into mortal sin (losing our justification before God), our restoration from it (through God’s gift of the sacrament of reconciliation, John 20:23; James 5:15), and the very nature of salvation as God’s making us fit to obey Him in love, which our spiritually dead human nature could never do prior to our rebirth in baptism. This is why St. Paul has such strong words against those who would require Christians to be circumcised to be considered “in Christ”—because slicing off the tip of your genitals doesn’t make you spiritually alive, or give you the Holy Spirit (which requires union with Christ)! Baptism does.

It is this new birth that empowers us to obey God thanks to the Holy Spirit that has been given to us (Acts 2:33; Eph. 1:13). This giving of the Spirit was prophesied by Jeremiah (31:31-35). Whenever the Apostles speak of “believing” in Christ, THIS is what they were calling people to believe! That is why baptism is the first and essential element of Christ’s Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20).

To “believe” Christ is to BELIEVE this Great Commission: be baptized (reborn), and obey. “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38), so that you can “observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:20).

It’s deep, profound, and simple. FAITH, BELIEF IN CHRIST, was always, necessarily, and essentially connected to first being baptized into Him, and then obeying Him.

The typology of the Temple is extremely illuminating on this point.

As the ancient Temple required God to actually come down and inhabit the Holy of Holies to make it worthy of His worship (Ex. 40:34; Num. 9:15-16; 1 Kings 8:10-11; 2 Chron. 7:1; Ezek. 10:4; 43:4-5; et al), so too are we made fit to be inhabited by God’s Holy Spirit by the washing of our sins and the regeneration of our nature in baptism. This was prefigured in many places throughout the Old Testament, including Noah’s flood wiping away sinners; the crossing of the Red Sea and the wiping out of Pharaoh’s army (representing slavery to sin); various prophetic types of water cleansing sin, such as Ezek. 36:25; and thus St. Peter declaring “Baptism now saves you” (1 Pet. 3:21).

This being made fit is how we ourselves become temples.

Now, through baptism and being incorporated into Christ, we are indvidual temples (1 Cor. 3:16-17; 6:19; Eph. 2:22; 1 Pet. 2:5; et al) that are part of the eternal temple of the Church (2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:21; 1 Tim. 3:15; Heb. 9:24; et al).

But while Christ has promised the perpetual integrity of the Church (Dan. 2:44; 7:14; Ps. 89:29; Matt. 16:18; 28:20; Luke 1:33; John 14:18; 16:13; Eph. 3:10; 1 Tim. 3:15; 2 Pet. 1:11; et al), individual members, no longer dead in sin but made alive, can with their free will choose to abandon Christ through grave sin and apostasy. Their fate will be the same as the ancient Temple made with human hands—destruction—which was a type of Christ’s salvific work in individual human souls, as St. Paul says explicitly:

“Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If any one destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and that temple you are.” (1 Cor. 3:16-17) (2/2) This doctrine of baptism, works, and salvations, is UNANIMOUS from the days of the Apostles. There is not a single Church Father who does not believe it. This is as true before the days of Constantine as after them (lest anyone continue to peddle the nonsense that Constantine founded the Catholic Church).

This is why St. Paul is crystal clear about what being “saved” is actually all about, and it all goes back to being reborn, being made a new creation, in baptism, for the purpose of doing what our first parents not only failed to do, but made it impossible to do by passing on to us their spiritually dead human nature: OBEY GOD.

“For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but ***keeping the commandments of God.***” (1 Cor. 7:19)

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but ***faith working through love***…For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a ***new creation.***” (Gal. 5:6; 6:15)

“[Y]ou were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God ***made alive*** together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses…”(Col. 2:12-13)

Baptism is how we are placed “in Christ.” Hence St. Paul declaring: “Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.” (2 Cor. 5:17)

Christ could not be clearer that this comes through baptism, not only in His Great Commission to the Apostles, but in His words to Nicodemus:

“Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.’” (John 3:3-5)

So when I say baptism—which Christ made essential to the Great Commission—was a HUGE issue in my conversion from protestantism (whose many sects couldn’t give me a consistent answer on what it actually did, and the role it played in salvation) to the Catholic Faith, this is why.

After reading the Fathers, I saw in the clearest, most undeniable, most unanimous terms imaginable that most protestant sects had completely fallen from a biblical, historical view of baptism, its nature, its effects, and its consequences, so as to be a different religion. In doing so, they had lost the very substance and marrow of the Christian faith, and their doctrines on faith, works, etc. had become hopelessly confused and distorted in the process.

If you do not get baptism right, you are getting the very thing Christ commanded to be done in the Great Commission wrong. And if most protestants are right, then 1,500 years of Christians got it wrong—which means Christ’s promises to remain with, guide, and prevent the defeat of His Church are manifestly and undeniably falsified.

A careful study of baptism alone—both in Scripture and in the Church Fathers—is sufficient to demolish the claims of protestantism.

What did Christians in the Bible do when they had a theological controversy?

They referred it to the Apostles/elders, who rendered a judgment with divine authority that “seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.” (Acts 15:28)

Only a church that does THAT can be biblical. Note what they did not do:

(1) Huddle as individuals/congregations/denominations/sects and interpret the Bible on their own;

(2) Make a determination lacking any divine authority;

(3) Separate into congregations/denominations/sects holding mutually contradictory beliefs about… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

THE END GAME OF FREEMASONRY AND OCCULTISM

All Freemasonry and occultism has one aim in mind: collapse the supernatural and natural orders into one order, where nature is not merely divinized, but divine itself. Meaning: “you shall be as gods.”

tanbooks.com/products/books… 1/7 This is why Pope Leo XIII and other Supreme Pontiffs warned that its animating principle was naturalism, and this anti-Christendom “Anti-Church” would end in pantheism (nature worship).

This is also why Freemasonry and occultism openly identify themselves (i.e. in their… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

As a protestant who loved my Bible, I was always shocked to realize there was not a single example of laymen asserting the right to interpret Scripture, or contradict apostolic authority (apostles/those they appointed), let alone establish their own independent churches/sects. Absolutely everywhere, the apostolic command is to obey apostolic authority. St. Paul tells St. Timothy and St. Titus, for example, that they have all authority to teach, rebuke, even silence others. No one else had that authority. Only them. And only they could appoint others.

1/18 A 🧵on Balenciaga, and the reality of sorcery in high places TODAY, right now:

The Balenciaga scandal has opened the eyes of many.

Good. It should. This stuff is absolutely not a joke. 2/18 Have you read “Hammer of Witches”? Most haven’t. It’s a big book written by a Dominican inquisitor in the late 1400’s who was tasked with investigating charges of witchcraft and sorcery in Germany. It was endorsed by the Pope.