QUOTE FROM BELOW: "Let me be plain. What a blasphemous, wicked institution is Roman Catholicism, blinding the eyes of untold millions to the light of the gospel of the free gift of salvation in Christ and His office as the sole Savior, Priest, and Mediator. By its papacy, priesthood, and sacraments, it has illegitimately inserted itself between Christ and man. This is a great evil."
My Visit to a Convent
by David Cloud of Way of Life
SEE:
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
Updated August 11, 2015 (first published December 8, 1998) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143)
During a trip to Canada in November 1998, I had an opportunity to visit a cloistered convent. A pastor friend invited me to meet his relative who had been a Catholic nun for 60 years. I have visited Catholic shrines and churches in many parts of the world, including the Vatican, but I had never been inside a convent. The nun that we visited was 80 years old and had lived most of her life shut away in a dim monastery. She could converse with us only from behind metal bars. There are even bars across the convent chapel, separating the nuns from the public. The nuns pray in the chapel by shifts around the clock. As you enter the chapel, there is a sign which says, "You are entering to adore the Jesus-host." Note how the nuns make a direct connection between Jesus and the Catholic host. The host, of course, is the consecrated wafer of the mass. According to Catholic theology, the wafer, when blessed by the priest, becomes the literal body and blood of Jesus. After the mass, the host is placed inside a little box called a tabernacle, and the people pray to it as if it were Jesus Christ Himself. Mother Teresa often spoke of the wafer and testified that her Jesus was the Catholic host. Once there was a fire in one of Mother Teresa's chapels, and she described how thankful the nuns were when someone ran inside the burning building and rescued "Jesus." It is this host that the nuns in Quebec are adoring 24 hours a day.They also pray to Mary. The convent belongs to the Congregation of the Servants of Jesus-Mary. Each nun carries a Rosary at all times. These are prayer beads which guide the petitioner in prayers to God and Mary. The nun we visited gave me a book which describes the history of her order. The last page contains a prayer to God "through Jesus and Mary." The nuns pray for the Catholic priests around the world and for "the unity of all men." I believe these prayers to deceiving spirits will be fulfilled when the events of Revelation 17-18 come to pass during the Great Tribulation. Events are shaping up even now for a one-world government and one-world “church.” Let me be plain. What a blasphemous, wicked institution is Roman Catholicism, blinding the eyes of untold millions to the light of the gospel of the free gift of salvation in Christ and His office as the sole Savior, Priest, and Mediator. By its papacy, priesthood, and sacraments, it has illegitimately inserted itself between Christ and man. This is a great evil. I remember witnessing to an elderly Catholic woman in Australia many years ago. I asked whether she was saved and knew for sure that she would go to heaven when she died. She replied that she was not sure, but that she had done the best she could all her life and she was trusting in “my church.” That is the best reply that Rome has to offer in its official dogmas. I remember witnessing to a nun of Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity order. This occurred during a recorded interview my wife and I had with the nun (Sister Ann) in Nepal in the early 1980s. The nun was working with Nepali people who were waiting to die at Nepali’s holiest Hindu site, Pashapati. Following is a snippet from that interview: CLOUD: Do you believe if they [the Nepali people she was working with] die believing in Shiva or in Ram [Hindu gods] they will go to heaven? ANN: Yes, that is their faith. My own faith will lead me to my God, no? So if they have believed in their god very strongly, if they have faith, surely they will be saved. CLOUD: Do you believe that Mary is the mother of God? ANN: Yes. CLOUD: And about the pope, what do you believe about him? ANN: He is the head of the church, the vicar of Christ. CLOUD: And about the mass, what is your belief about the mass? ANN: The sacrifice which was once offered at Calvary is renewed in the every day mass at the altar. It is an unbloody sacrifice. That [the cross] was offered in a bloody manner; this [the mass] is an unbloody manner. CLOUD: So there is a sacrifice in the mass every day, like offering Christ again? ANN: Yes, again. CLOUD: [Y]ou do not believe [Hindus] are lost, right? ANN: No, they are not lost. They are saved according to their faith, you know. If they believe whatever they believe that is their salvation. CLOUD: When you die--you yourself--what do you believe will happen to you? ANN: I will not go to hell. Maybe for a few days I may be in purgatory. For we also have our imperfection. Though we are sisters; we are religious; we don't have any outward, big sin, but some sin is there. CLOUD: And that is the purpose of purgatory? ANN: That is the purpose of purgatory. CLOUD: Who do you pray to? Do you ever pray to Mary? ANN: Yes, she is our mother. CLOUD: Do you ever pray to other saints? ANN: We have some saints in whom we have confidence. We can pray to them also. Like my own patron saint is Saint Ann, the mother of our lady, Mary. So I pray to her to guide me on the right path when I do my work. The late Mother Teresa and her co-workers and other nuns claim to love Jesus and to have faith in Him, and we know they sincerely desire to help people, but, in reality their faith is a mixed faith. It is the Catholic gospel of faith plus sacraments and works, which is cursed according to Galatians 1:6-7. If nuns had true biblical faith in the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, they would not attend the Catholic mass, which they freely testify to be the "re-sacrificing of Christ." When Sister Ann called the mass an unbloody sacrifice, she was only the official teaching of her church as declared by the Second Vatican Council and the New Catholic Catechism. If they had true biblical faith that the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ takes away all sin and grants eternal life, they would not believe in purgatory. If we really love Roman Catholics, we will preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, the only gospel whereby we can be saved from eternal destruction. We preached the gospel to Sister Ann that day by the banks of Nepal's most holy Hindu river. We opened the Bible to Hebrews and described to her that once-for-all Sacrifice which has been accomplished by the Lamb of God. I have prayed for her since then, and I hope to see her in heaven one day. “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10). This is the urgent need of all Catholics. Those who ignore Rome’s doctrinal errors and affiliate with Roman Catholics as if they were Bible-believing Christians are disobeying the Bible’s command to separate from error (Romans 16:17) and are doing Roman Catholics an eternal injustice by not standing unequivocally for the truth of God’s Word and the faith once delivered to the saints. “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:6-8).
