Letters To A Catholic

Dear Brennan,

Are you still convinced that “natural reasoning alone has provided mankind with more than sufficient grounds for belief in the immortality of the soul” ? I know that you will remain unconvinced by the argu­ments of my last letter; but surely they must have stimulated you to re-examine the philo­sophical foundations of your belief, which men of darkened intellect consent to, and the foolish “wise of this world” invent arguments for.

In all kindness and sincerity, I would sug­gest that you forget these vain vaporisings of the unenlightened mind—these foolish dissertations and “old wives tales”— and that you turn to the Word of Truth and sound doctrine, and there test the Catholic teachings concerning the soul’s immortality as outlined in Mr. Rumble’s book, “The Anti-Immortals”, which you have challen­ged me to answer.

Under the heading, “Mankind not de­ceived”, Mr. Rumble asserts that, in relation to the present subject, “there is safety in numbers” (p. 9). I am reminded of the Lord’s words that few find the strait gate to life. Not simply that few go in, as though they preferred the broad and pleasant way to destruction and chose it of their own free will; but rather is it “few there be that find it”. If the majority do not find it, how can they know it? And if they do not know it, how can they be quoted in evidence as though they did know it?

As though snatching at the proverbial straw, Mr. Rumble quotes Sir James Frazer as “an outstanding authority on this sub­ject” (Frazer was an agnostic) :

“Among savage races a life after death is not a matter of speculation and conjecture, of hope and fear; it is a practical certainty which the in­dividual as little dreams of doubting as he doubts the reality of his conscious existence. He assumes it without inquiry and acts upon it without hesita­tion as if it were one of the best ascertained truths within the limits of human experience.”

This passage is full of qualifications that imply the natural explanation:

1. He wouldn’t dream of doubting;
2. He assumes it;
3. He takes it without inquiry;
4. And as if it were truth;
5. He would no more doubt this than doubt the reality of existence.

The human mind accepts positives, and intellectually conceives negatives by eliminating positives; but the unreasoning mind does not proceed beyond the acceptance of the positive if the effort to do so would be greater than the will to do so. You know from your own experience that this is true Few Australians are self-professed atheists: the majority would say Amen to most of the common doctrines of Christendom. But challenge them to prove those doctrines, and they will have to think up their evid­ences on the spot, for the simple reason that they have never given serious thought to the subject, or ever conscientiously put their “assumptions” to the test. They are blind followers of their blind guides.

Equally so, given the consciousness of will, thought and feeling, the unreasoning mind easily accepts the idea of their continuity, because it requires practically no cerebral exertion to do so; whereas the con­cept of non-existence calls for conscious mental effort. And the will to make the effort is frequently lacking in the intellect­ual also; because the thought of one’s self becoming nothing but, at best, fertilizer for the ground, is repugnant to everybody. So it should be: it’s a curse imposed because of sin; and no curse is a joy to contemplate except where it highlights a deliverance from the ,curse. In this case, those who shall be delivered from the curse of mortality are not those with immortal souls, but those who by good works seek for immortality (Rom. 2., 7—Knox). If they are the posses­sors of immortality, why should they strive for it? And if these, the righteous ones, must seek it by perseverance in doing good, then where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?

God has set before all those to whom the Gospel is preached, life and death; and has commanded them to choose: “For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting” (John 3. 16). Believe or Perish—Perish or have Life Everlasting: these are the two alternatives. And this is what Christadelphians preach. The perishing is as real and certain as the life everlasting; and they are the opposites one of another. Any system that denies this contradicts the clear teaching of the Bible, and takes sides with the serpent who first taught it in Eden. According to him, death is a sublimation to the angelic nature: “Ye shall be as gods”, said he. And because of that accursed lie he was condemned, and became the federal head of the systems that propagate his doctrine.

God told the serpent, “I will set enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3. 15, Authorized. This translation agrees with Hebrew and Greek: Knox and the Douay don’t; as Knox admits in his footnote to this passage).

In spite of Knox’s argument for the incorrect Latin translation (on the basis of a better balance being given to the sentence!), the indisputable fact remains that the originals are in the masculine gender—not the feminine. This is because the offspring of the woman was that righteous seed of which Christ is the federal head. Thus, concerning the crucifixion, the writer to the Hebrews was able to say that Jesus partook of flesh and blood so that “through death he might destroy him who had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil: and might deliver them, who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage”. And those who are Christ’s, Paul encourages in these words: “And the God of peace crush Satan under your feet speedily” (Heb. 2. 14; Rom. 16. 20). If you cannot see that these remarks concerning the fatal crushing of the devil and Satan have anything to do with the crushing of the serpent, you have only to read Apoc. 12. 9, where the serpent is given both titles.

Who was the serpent crushed but sin and his embodiment in the organisation of flesh? The serpents are those men and women related to the serpent through his false doctrine, and born of it. Thus, when Pharisees and Romans united against Christ to crucify him, God was able to refer to the serpent as the doer of their dark and dreadful deed.

The woman’s seed developed, in its early stages, through the line of Seth (Gen. 5), when men began to call upon the name of the Lord (Gen. 4. 25). At this latter place, Knox adds a confirmatory footnote:

“some would translate it, ‘it was then that men began to call upon the name of the Lord’. But the suggestion is more probably that Enos (or perhaps Seth himself) began a God-fearing tradition, in contrast to the descendants of Cain.”

The line of Seth records no material benefactor of the race, no artist or inventor; but men called by the name of the Lord (as another translation renders the passage) constitute the line.

What a contrast is found in the serpent seed constituting the line of Cain! They were an enterprising, ungodly race. Per­haps too enterprising to allow time for God.

They give us not one example of men who walked with God; but they do give us the following first things: murder, polygamy, city ,musician, metal-worker, poet.The serpent’s progeny may from thence be traced through the ancient centuries, when the serpent was venerated as the bringer of knowledge and the Great Bene­factor of mankind, the giver of Promethean Fire. The religious forms and associated ideas underwent various changes; but the basic elements were always the same: it was the serpent and his offspring that excelled in the intellectual attainments of the flesh, exalting the creations of the human spirit, shaping history with that knowledge and those fleshly concepts that were to lead man to the decadence of these last days and (were it not for divine intervention—Mark 13. 20) to the utter annihilation of the whole human race.

Thus, from the wisdom of the serpent to that of the Pharisees and Jewish literati of Christ’s day, the growth of the anti-typical serpent may be traced. Jesus referred to these highly ,respected (by the populace) scholars as serpents (Matt. 23. 33). So did John Baptist (Matt. 3. 7). And Paul, educated by one of the most eminent teachers of his times (Acts 5. 34; 22. 3), laid aside his worldly wisdom, admitting that such things as were gain to him were loss to Christ. It will do you good to read 1 Cor. 1 and 2 Cor. 10-12, and to note how that, in decrying these ”superlative apostles” (who were no apostles but “deceitful workers” and “Satan’s ministers”) he warns the ecclesia to be on guard lest “as the serpent beguiled Eve by his wisdom, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that Letters To A Catholic is in Christ” (2 Cor. 11. 3). The power of the serpent was already corrupting the simplicity of the truth in the time of Paul; the mystery of iniquity was already working; he was coming—the great Anti-Christ—whose revealing is “according to the working of Satan, in all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and in all seduction of iniquity to them that perish: because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe lying (Greek: “pseudos”—a falsehood)” (2 Thess. 2. 9, 10). What wonder, then, that many have followed this strong delusion of the Anti-Christ and have believed his falsehood? For the coming of Christ was to be preceded by a falling away from the faith, and a revealing of the man of sin.

The Pharisees were, as Mr. Rumble rightly shows, believers in the immortality of the soul; and against their false doctrine Jesus taught his disciples to be on guard (Matt. 16. 12). In fact, he explicitly told them to have nothing to do with it (Matt. 16. 12). Yet Mr. Rumble is advising us, against these clear statements of the Lord, to believe that doctrine and to embrace it as an article of faith.

It is fitting that the Papacy should preach this doctrine of the Pharisees, for Rome was on the side of the serpent and shared with the serpentine clergy of those days in the bruising of the woman’s offspring—it being prophetic that the anti-typical serpent should grow through history as the anti-christian papal apostacy (Compare Dan. 7; Is. 27. 1; 51. 9, 10; Apoc. 12. 9—all Douay); and Rome it was, that great anti-typical Sodom or Egypt, wherein our Lord was crucified (Apoc. 11. 8); and Rome it is who has crucified him many times more in the bodies of his saints, whom they have branded as heretics.

Thus Rome is styled, in Apoc. 12. 9, “the dragon, that old serpent which is the devil and Satan who deceiveth the whole world”. Thus Mr. Rumble contradicts the Bible here also, when he says that mankind is not de­ceived. Mankind is deceived; and deceived, moreover, by the serpent wisdom: “Death is not really death, but the gateway to life”.

The serpent teaching, from the very first, appealed to natural wisdom. Surely, noth­ing that God made would be destroyed; surely, he would not have created in vain? Death could not possibly be the cessation of existence: it must mean either banishment from God or a sublimation to the angelic nature. Why, Eve had only to think of the angels and their immortality in order to be convinced that God intended that she and her husband should attain to the god-hood of their knowledge! But God said, “You’re a liar, and the father of it. Out! Upon your belly shall you go, eating dust; and cursed shall you thus be all the days of your existence”.

Most are like poor, simple Eve, ready to believe those things gratifying to the “lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life”. Who can contemplate with pleasure that horror of great darkness? Or who can willingly conceive that Job’s “land of silence”, where the “worms shall sweetly feed upon me”, can be the end of existence? No, the thinking of the flesh has rather set up a great institutional religion of the flesh into whose wide gates and broad ways the majority turn. For the natural mind does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, since they are foolishness unto him (1 Cor. 2. 11-15) ; therefore, it justifies itself by human ways and human thinking.

The Catholics have indeed been the material benefactors of mankind in common with the rest of the Cainites. Gerald Vann (a “Father” of the Church) claims that “to Benedictine monasticism, more than to any other single influence, Europe owes its education” (“The Water and the Fire” p. 40). This is true enough; but of what sort has the education been? There is a way which “seemeth right unto a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death”. And it is to death not immortality that the whole sys­tem is leading mankind; because it has placed (and is placing) at his disposal knowledge that he is not yet ready to use, because he has not yet conquered self. What, then, are those priests but men of the kind denounced by Paul: “Deceitful workers”, “false apostles”, ministers of that system Apocalyptically styled “Satan”?

This section of Mr. Rumble’s book has taken me longer than I intended; because it has led me into a consideration of the ser­pent’s seed and his false doctrine. Some of my other readers might be shocked by this attack on the Catholic Church, and would perhaps tell me that I should not judge. However, the judgment that Scripture con­demns is judgment according to the senses of the flesh, while just judgment (that is, judgment enlightened by the Word) is com­manded (John 7. 24). If, for example, we are commanded to cast not our pearl before swine, then we are obliged to judge certain ones as swine in order to carry out that commandment; but, of course, the judg­ing must come from the enlightenment given by those scriptures that clearly define such a class. In this case, however, we are not dealing with swine, but with serpents; and what I have written concerning these has been the dear delineation of God Him­self in His Word, the Bible.

Brennan, you know, from your long asso­ciation with me, that I bear no personal animosity. And you have already read most of the points of this letter, and have discus­sed them with me, and know that they are to appear in print. If your Church is truly divine, it need not fear “the gates of hell”; but, if it is not divine, let it beware -the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God”.

Against the enemies of the Truth, the Bible is indeed a terrible sword; and I, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, must wield it to wound (for no warrior in earnest com­bat wields his weapon gently). But to the opposer who intreats God’s mercy, the Word is the Balm of Gilead that will heal him of those wounds. To you it can indeed be this,—and bread, and wine, and corn, and oil, and water, light, spirit, and life for ever. “For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting”. You have not got that life; but God is offering it to you: perish, or have life everlasting—those are the two alternatives. He does not offer you something that you have already. Think it over.

Sincerely,

DEAN