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In 1862, Catholic visionary Don Bosco (1815-1888) had a dream about a "Gospel ship."
In his dream, the captain of the ship—representing the Pope—guided it through the war-torn and stormy seas of this world. The ship was then anchored between two pillars, representing the twin pillars of the faith. The twin pillars he saw were the Eucharist and the veneration of Mary:
This stately vessel is shielded by a flotilla escort. Winds and waves are with the enemy. In this midst of this endless sea, two solid columns, a short distance apart, soar high into the sky: one is surmounted by a statue of the Immaculate Virgin at whose feet a large inscription reads: Help of Christians; the other, far loftier and sturdier, supports a [Communion] Host of proportionate size and bears beneath it the inscription Salvation of believers.i
The Eucharist
Christ is killed again and again during the mass, but His resurrection, acension, and life are minimized. This can also be seen in the use of the crucifix in Catholicism. The crucifix—an icon of the cross with Jesus still hanging on it—only commemorates the death of Christ, ignoring the resurrection that proves His victory over death and Satan.
Mary
The sinner that ventures directly to Christ may come with dread and apprehension of his wrath; but let him only employ the mediation of the Virgin with her Son and she has only to show that Son the breasts that gave him suck and his wrath will immediately be appeased.ii
She is also seen as "immaculate," or sinless like Christ was on Earth. However, she obtained this sinless statues without the blood sacrifice of atonement, thus making the death of Christ unnecessary in her case. If God would choose to declare ordinary humans sinless, then why did Christ have to die on the cross? This is another example of how the Roman Catholic system has minimized the role of Christ in our salvation and put another idol in His place.
Mary is the modern version of the ancient Babylonian sun god, or one of the female personifications of that deity such as Isis, Artemis, Venus, or Astarte. This is the same goddess worshiped in New Age circles as the great earth mother, as we can see in the following examples.
New Age proponent and psychologist Ken Wilber writes this:Great goddess Kali...when viewed in her highest form as the wife of Shiva, is a perfect example of the assimilation of the old Great Mother image into a new and higher corpus of Great Goddess mythology.iii
Author V. S. Agrawala writes this:Mother Earth is the deity of the new age...the modern age offers its salutations to Mother Earth whom it adores as the super-goddess...Mother Earth is the presiding deity of the age, let us worship her.iv
The Catholic worship of Mary is identical. Read more on paganism and Mary, the worship of Mary in Catholicism, or the use of the rosary in Mary veneration.
Biblical Pillars
In contrast to Don Bosco's mystical pillars, the Bible's pillars of faith rest on an entirely different foundation: obedience to God and faith in Jesus Christ. Revelation 14:12 tells us the identifiers of God's true people:Here is the patience of the saints. Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.
Read about spiritism in the Jehovah's Witness movement
i. Don Bosco's Prophecy of the Two Pillars, Theotokos Catholic Books website.
ii. Catholic Layman (July, 1856).
iv. V. S. Agrawala, as quoted in Klaus K. Klostermaier, A Survey of Hinduism (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989): 276.
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This article is adapted from Truth Matters by Professor Walter J. Veith, an international speaker who has studied Biblical issues in-depth in his quest for truth. His popular series Genesis Conflict brings the debate between Creation and evolution to a new climax as he dissects the arguments with a scientific eye. His highly-acclaimed series Total Onslaught sheds light on the state of the world today as we move to a one-world government and an anticipated apocalypse.
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