(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

You told us that this is an open book that tells us things that must shortly come to pass. And Father, it's actually a book I think that people just don't want to understand. Because they don't want to believe what's written in there. But I thank you so much for writing a book that's so clear to us to understand if we're saved. And that we have the Holy Ghost guiding us as we read. And so Father, I just pray that you would speak to our hearts and help us to know this truth tonight. And in Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Now, tonight's sermon is almost more of a Bible study than a sermon. Kind of like the original sermon that I did on Revelation. And kind of the format that I stick with. Sunday morning is more of a classic preaching time where I preach more of a traditional type sermon. Wednesday nights when I'm preaching through the Bible, that's more of a preaching. Sunday nights I try to just teach doctrine. I try to teach the Bible. And sometimes it's more of a sermon, but I try to teach things out of the Bible. We're living in a day where people just don't know what they believe. They don't know doctrine. And they know all about how to be encouraged when they're sad. They know all about how to get along with people because that's what they hear preaching. And that's all fine and dandy and that's important, those kind of practical type messages. But we're living in a day where unfortunately kids grow up in a church and they grow up and they just have not been taught the doctrines of the faith. They've not been taught what the Bible says. They've not been taught what to believe about certain things. Now the average person that you ask does not know why they're a Baptist. They don't know why they go to a Baptist church. And part of what I'm going to talk about is why I'm a Baptist tonight. I'm going to explain to you why it's so important to be a Baptist. And I'm not ashamed to be called a Baptist. I'm never going to take the name Baptist off this church, ever. I'm not going to say, well, you know, people don't like that. We get so many more people if we just change it to Faithful Word Community Church. No, we're not going to do that. We're going to stick with Faithful Word Baptist Church. And by the way, I love the name Faithful Word Baptist Church. When I was starting this church, I wanted to start a church with a unique name because I just thought it would be nice to start a church. There are so many churches that are called, you know, Grace Baptist Church, Faith Baptist Church, Calvary Baptist Church, and those are great names. But I just wanted a unique name for some reason. And I thought about it and I was reading my Bible in Titus and it said, Holding Fast the Faithful Word. And I thought to myself, you know, this is the Faithful Word. This is a book that I can trust. This book is reliable on my end. I just believe that I have the Faithful Word of God. And so I typed it into Google, you know, Google.com. Faithful Word Baptist Church, zero hits. And I said, hey, this is going to be a unique name because I typed in a bunch of other even just oddball names and tons of hits because there are just so many Baptist churches out there. And so I was thrilled that there was no Faithful Word Baptist Church and so I like that name. But I like that name Baptist also and I'm going to explain to you tonight why we're a Baptist. Now before I get into this Bible study, let me just give you a little bit of my heart. Let me just talk to you a little bit. And I hope you understand this and I think you might understand where I'm coming from on this. But I grew up an independent Baptist. And this fits in with the subject. I grew up an independent fundamental Baptist was kind of the terminology that was used. And I'm talking about I went to churches that believed the King James Bible. I'm talking about I went to churches that knocked on people's doors and were aggressive about getting people saved. I went to churches where the preaching was straight down the line. They preached on sin. They preached on doctrine. They preached on the blood of Jesus Christ. They preached on the Gospel, being born again, salvation. I grew up in churches where people were baptized on a regular basis, where converts were being baptized and things were happening. I'm an independent Baptist. That's who I am today. And unfortunately, I find myself looking around at the independent fundamental Baptist movement and I'm just explaining to you a little bit about how I feel and a little bit of the rationale behind this church and so forth. I look around and I find myself very distant from the independent fundamental Baptist movement. I'm just explaining this to you. For example, I got in the mail the other day, and it makes me sad because I grew up and things were just a whole lot different in the independent Baptist churches that I grew up in and the churches that I've been to, churches that I've been a member of today are unrecognizable. And even just the mainstream independent fundamental Baptist movement is just going liberal. There's really not much else out there. I can't find anything that's more conservative. I can't find anything that's more in line with the Bible, and so this saddens me. I got something in the mail the week before last, and it was an advertisement for a conference, and this is one of these big conferences where great preachers from all over America, the independent fundamental Baptist... These are the leaders of the independent fundamental Baptist movement. These are pastors who pastor great big churches. People have looked up to them for years as leaders and role models and great preachers. And I got this invitation for a meeting in Georgia, in McDonough, Georgia, and it's called the Nationwide Independent Baptist Fellowship. And it's a great big preaching conference where all these preachers from all across America are getting together and it's amazing because they had a moderator and a vice moderator, and they had officers, and it almost seemed like they had this little denomination going, almost like they had this little network going. And so I got this invitation. I looked down the list of who was going to be there, and it was... Let me go down the list here. Paul Chappell from Lancaster, California. Great big church there, Lancaster Baptist Church. And you may not know these names, but these are people that are household names among independent Baptists. Dr. David Gibbs. Dr. Bob Gray, Jacksonville, Florida. Dr. Tony Hudson, Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Dr. Bob Kelly, West Columbia, South Carolina. R.B. Ouellette, Bridgeport, Michigan. Dr. Max Barton, Dr. Clyde Box, Dr. Ron Comfort, and Dr. Sheldon Smith, and Dr. Clarence Sexton from Tennessee. And let's see if there's anybody else on here. Dr. Don Sisk, Lancaster, California. Bobby Roberson from Walkertown, North Carolina. And the conference was called Fan the Flame. And boy, I thought it looked like it was some on-fire, fundamental Baptist kind of preacher. And please bear with me. I'm just trying to explain to you a little bit where I'm coming from as a preacher. And it looked like it was just this exciting, fiery preaching, and all these guys are going to be there, and it's, wow, this is just straight down the line. This is it, man. Well, I went on the website. I went on the website, and I looked, and it was being put on by a church called the People's Baptist Church in Georgia there. And the guy who was running the whole thing, the guy who organized this whole thing, was pastor of another People's Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina. His name was Max Barton. I went to the website of his church, and the first thing I saw, I click on the website, and there's just a big stained glass window was his logo of his website. Giant stained glass window, picture of his church, great big giant stained glass window, great big steeple, and the choir there. I mean, let's face it, it looked like a Roman Catholic church because he's got this great big stained glass window. I went to his statement of faith, and he said that this is what you have to do in order to be saved on his statement of faith. Number one, admit you're a sinner. Number two, be willing to turn away from your sins, to be saved, okay? That's how you get to go to heaven. And then number three, after you've done that, believe that Jesus Christ died for you and was buried and rose again. And then number four, through prayer, invite Jesus into your life to become your personal savior. Now, you may not understand all that, but invite Jesus to come into your life is not the kind of gospel preaching that I heard when I was growing up. I heard things like, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, be born again, get saved, not invite him into your life. And I sure didn't hear somebody tell me that I had to turn away from my sins and be willing to turn from my sins in order to go to heaven, because I just thought that it was, I thought Jesus paid it all. I thought it was just the blood of Jesus Christ. I thought it was just, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. I didn't know I had to clean up my life in order to go to heaven, because in that case, I'm still not on my way to heaven, because I haven't turned from all my sins, and I'm not sure which sins I have to turn from, which particular sin is it, because we're all sinners, and it kind of fits in with that stained glass window, because it's the same thing, that same teaching of work salvation, where you earn your way to heaven either by giving up something or by doing some good work. It's all the same. Well, then I looked further, and I saw they had a Christian school, so I clicked on that Greenville Christian Academy. Notice the lack of Baptist in the name, just Christian Academy. Then I noticed they had a list of TV commercials that they're running for their school, for their Christian school. So this is a Baptist church that has this Christian school, and they're running TV commercials to promote their school just to anybody, just trying to get as many people as they can to come in. Maybe it's because they're charging $375 a month. That might be part of the reason why they're running TV ads, trying to get as many people to come as they can. I click on the first one. I went under DVD promotional TV spots. The first one was called Leaders of Tomorrow. I click on it, and this is what I hear. T-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t. This is their... And you may say, well, what's the big... Hey, look, I didn't grow up listening to rock music in church. I didn't grow up with churches that condoned rock music and that would play an advertisement for their Christian school on the television with rock music. And that was the first thing, just... T-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t. And no mention of Baptist anywhere in this commercial, no mention of winning people to Christ, no mention of people getting saved, no mention of the King James Bible, no mention of anything like that. Just come, your kid will get a great education and morals and values and stuff like that. I click on the next one, and it's just the same thing, more rock music. I click on the next because there are all these little promotionals, more rock music. And then they say we have traditional hymns, and this is what they were singing. This was their traditional music. Take joy, my King, in what you hear. Let it be a sweet, sweet sound in your ear. And that was their... I mean, that's not the hymns. That's not traditional music. That's the same thing you're going to hear at the non-denominational church, same thing you're going to hear at the liberal church down the street of this kind of touchy-feely, sensual, not a lot of doctrine in that song. It's not to God be the glory, great things He hath done, so loved He the world that He gave us His Son, who yielded His life and atonement for sin and opened the life gate that all may go in. Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Let the earth hear His voice and on and on. Oh, perfect redemption, the purchase of blood to every believer the promise of God. The vilest offender who repents of his sin? No. The vilest offender who truly believes that moment from Jesus apart and recedes. Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Let the earth hear His voice. Oh, come to the Father through Jesus the Son and give Him the glory, great things He hath done. You see, when you take out that kind of doctrinal, great music that just grips your heart and you get... Take joy, my King, in what you hear. You know, that's where you end up saying that you've got to give up your sins to go to heaven. That's where you end up putting commercials on TV to get the worldly crowd into your Christian school with rock music and the promo. And then they're advertising their sports program. I click on the next DVD promotional. Athletics, it was called. I click on the athletics one. This is the guy putting on this conference that... What's Paul Chappell doing there? Huh? Is this who he's hanging out with? Some guy who's playing a bunch of rock music? What's David Gibbs and Tony Hessen and stuff? It's what they're all about these days. They're going to some guy who's building his church on it, getting people in his Christian school with rock music, and he's got athletics. You click on athletics, what do you expect to see? Expect to see some guys playing basketball or something? You expect to see some guys playing football? No, no. Girls wearing shorts halfway down their thigh running up and down the soccer field, slapping each other, giving each other high fives like boys. And then you see girls playing baseball in their skin-tight pants. This is an independent fundamental Baptist church who preaches against women wearing pants. Now, whether you believe it's right or wrong for women to wear pants, this church supposedly preaches against that. You know, they're independent fundamental Baptist. They believe in women dressing like women and men dressing like men. But then they got their girls in the Christian school playing baseball in tight, skin-tight pants, you know, poured into a pair of pants. Men's baseball, you know, baseball pants are like good night. It's embarrassing to even watch men play baseball in those things. And so the point is, and just try to understand where I'm coming from, this makes me sad, this makes me angry, because this is not the on-fire kind of funnel. I mean, no mention of people getting saved, no mention of people getting baptized. Just come to our Christian school, and we'll give you an education, and it's $375 a month, and so forth. And it just, it made me sad that that's where this thing is going. And I just found myself feeling a little bit separated from these people. And, you know, I just didn't feel like an independent fundamental Baptist. I've contemplated taking that word fundamental. It seems like it just doesn't mean anything anymore. I thought about taking that out of my invitation to church, just so that I'm not yoked up with these people, just so I'm not associated with them. But aside from that, that's the introduction to the sermon. Now, here's the sermon. Why am I a Baptist? Why is this called Faithful Word Baptist Church? Well, look at Revelation 17, and I'm going to show you something very interesting in the Bible here. And if you're honest today, I think you're going to believe what I show you, because it's something that's kind of as plain as the nose on your face. But if you have a reason why you don't want to believe this, then you might not see it as well. But we're going to look in chapter 17 of Revelation here. Now, if you remember the first sermon that I preached on the book of Revelation, I started out and I just gave an overview of the events of Revelation, kind of put the chronology in perspective. I showed you how you can match up the chronology in five different places. Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21, Revelation chapters 1 through 11, and Revelation 12 through 22. You put them side by side, and the events are exactly the same in the exact same order. Then in the second sermon, I was trying to fill in some of the gaps that I didn't cover, so I just focused on Revelation 2 and 3, and I showed you those churches, which are so indicative of churches that we see, and dangers that we could fall into as a church. We could become like one of those seven churches and fall into the same trap, and what to look out for. And now we're going to another one of those parenthetical-type passages that doesn't quite fit in with the chronology. It's where God kind of steps back from the story and declares chronology, and He says, let me show you something. And He even says that. He says, come hither. He says, I want to show you something. He says, I want to show you something. I know you've seen the whole course of events. I know you've seen the whole tribulation and the seven years and all of it. But He says, I want to show you something in particular. I want to show you God's judgment on the great whore. You see that in verse number 1 at the end of the verse there? I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters. Now, what is this whore? Now, I don't think that the Bible is very hard to understand, to be honest with you. I think that if you just are open-minded and just look at it and you're saved and you've got the Holy Spirit and you're not trying to force it to say something that it's not saying, if you just read this, it's very clear what is the mother whore. It's very clear to see what the whore is. Well, let's put together the pieces of the puzzle, shall we? Let's start out in verse number 9. And here is the mind that hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sitteth. It's in verse number 9 of chapter 17. Now, here's the thing that I find interesting about this. In verse number 6, we saw John marveling. He's amazed at the sight that he's saying and he can't figure it out. And in verse number 7, the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? Why are you so amazed? He says, I will tell thee the mystery of the woman. He says, Listen, John, I'm going to tell you exactly who this is. I'm not going to keep you in the dark on this. He says, I will tell thee the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns. He says, The beast that thou sawest was and is not, and shall ascend out of the bottomless base. He's talking about Satan. He's talking about the devil, the dragon, the beast. Very obvious. He says, Look, let me just explain it to you. We're talking about Satan. We're talking about the devil. And he says, The seven heads on that beast are the seven mountains on which the woman sitteth. You see, there are only two cities in the world, my friend, that are sitting on seven mountains today. There are two cities in the entire world. Now, you tell me which one you think we're talking about here. One of them is Rome, Italy. Now, when I was in elementary school and public school, I had a textbook in history. This was in sixth grade. There was a chapter called Rome, the City on Seven Hills. That was the name of it. This is a secular textbook. This was just a book. It's just a fact. Rome, Italy is on seven hills. There's another city that's sitting on seven hills today. It's Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Now, which one do you think we're talking about here? Which one do you think we're talking about in the Bible here about John? Well, we're talking about Rome, Italy, of course. And so we go through this, and we see this woman that's pictured. In verse number two, it says, With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. See, the whole great horror that's being described in Revelation 17 is most undoubtedly the Roman Catholic Church. It is the Roman Catholic Church. And we see throughout history, and I'm not really a big history buff. I used to be. I used to study history incessantly. But now I just focus more on the Bible. I focus more on what the Bible says. You see, I figured out you can't really trust what history teaches you most of the time. But if you look in the history books, you'll see that throughout history, in Europe, there has been this constant fornication between the Roman Catholic Church and the kings of the earth. You see, the Roman Catholic Church's method of domination was to marry into these empires. For example, think about Mary of... Mary of Scots, I think her name was. The one who was... Is that right? Mary of Scots? Okay, Henry VIII. Here's a man who's the king of England. Mary of Scots. He marries her as a way for the Catholic Church. Or no, I'm mixed up. Mary of Scots. Catherine of Spain. Stop everything. Catherine of Spain. Henry VIII married Catherine of Spain. And in doing so, they were trying to infiltrate England and turn England into a Roman Catholic country. Because Catherine of Spain, which was a Roman Catholic nation, was a devout Roman Catholic. And by marrying her, he brought Catholicism into England. And because he was married, and it's hard for us to understand today how these politics worked back then, but they were constantly doing this. They would marry women from Catholicism, and they would try to use that to get their grip into different countries. Because the Roman Catholic Church has always controlled Italy, Spain, Portugal, and these different places, but there are certain places that they couldn't really ever quite get into. And England was one of them. Germany, they had trouble getting into it at different times, stuff like that. Well, that's what we're talking about here. This fornication that goes on, these illicit relationships and things where these women would get divorced and whatever and marry into these situations. And like I said, I'm not the expert on history. But look at verse number four. Actually, look at verse number three. It says, I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast in the middle of the earth, full of names of blasphemy. What's that talking about? That's talking about Holy Father. It's talking about calling the priest's father. It's talking about calling the post the vicar of Christ on earth. It's talking about calling him Holy Father. It's talking about calling Mary the mother of God. Names of blasphemy is something that characterizes this system that we're talking about, this religion. So we saw that it's seated in Rome, Italy. It's sitting on seven hills. It's a very blasphemous religion. It's a religion that has a lot to do with alcohol. We saw in verse number two, made drunk with the wine of her fornication. It's a city that has tried to dominate through marriage and through fornication. Look at verse number 18. It says, And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, talking about Rome, which reigneth over the kings of the earth. Now, have you ever heard of the Holy Roman Empire? There was a time called the Dark Ages, the Holy Roman Empire, when the Catholic Church literally ruled Europe. There was the Pope, and he controlled the kings that were under him. He controlled the King of Spain. He controlled the King of Italy, and so forth. He was the real leader of the whole Europe, and it was the Dark Ages. It was where people were suppressed. It was where reading and writing was outlawed by the Catholic Church, and people were kept in darkness. There was no scientific advances. People lived in filth and ignorance. The Black Plague was due to the fact that they had no sanitation at all because they were being dominated by this kingdom of darkness run by the Catholic Church and the Pope. Look at verse number four. So now we see the blasphemy. It says, And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication. So here's their fancy clothing. Here's the fancy cathedrals. Here's the purple and the scarlet robes that they wear. Here's the gold and the crimson and the precious stones. And look at verse number five. It says, And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. Look at verse six. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints. Now, of course, we know that the Roman Catholic Church executed 60 million people in the Dark Ages, mostly during the 200 years known as the Spanish Inquisition. And they executed people for not believing like they believed, for not bowing down to the Roman Catholic Church, for not admitting that the wafer that they gave out was really literally the body of Jesus Christ, and people were executed for that. They were killed. Now, this is a historical fact. They don't teach you this in the public school, my friend. I was in public school, and we skipped three chapters. We did every chapter in that book. There were three chapters on the Middle Ages. We skipped all three of them, moved right on. Because it's so controversial just to even read about the fact that they murdered these people and tortured them to death to try to get them to confess that the wafer really was Jesus and all their Roman Catholic dogma. They tortured people. They burned people at the stake. They tried to suppress learning and so forth. Well, we see this woman, this whore, is drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And on and on down the list, this is none other than the Roman Catholic Church. Nobody can point at this and say that it's anything else unless they just have some kind of a soft spot for the mother whore, the mother abominations, because the Roman Catholic Church is the one who's been martyring the Christians for all these years, who tortured people, who had the Inquisition, who murdered people, who has been fornicating with the kings of the earth, the city that ruled the world, the city that dominates people and countries and tries to dominate and that's blasphemous and has these royal apparel and these fancy things. Now look, why is it called Mystery Babylon? Look at verse number five there. Why is it called Mystery Babylon the Great? You see, because this religion started at the Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel, what was the philosophy? We're going to work our way to heaven. We're going to build a tower that may reach unto heaven. And not only that, but we're all going to get together. We're all going to join together. Now the word Catholic means universal. That's what it means. It means the universal church. The word Catholic, look up in the dictionary, it means universal. Universal church, we're all linked together. One big church, one big religion, one big organization. Not the local church, not the church of Ephesus, not the church of Smyrna, not the church of Thyatira, but the church. One big church with one man at the head of that church. I don't have time to go there, but in the book of Jeremiah, you'll see people that are on their way to be... They're being taken into captivity. And what happens is, God has told them, don't flee into Egypt. He says, I want you to stay here and let the king of Babylon take you over. Now these people had forsaken God and they were starting to worship the Babylonian gods. And the Bible says that they worshiped the queen of heaven. That's what it says. It says they baked cakes to the queen of heaven. Babylonian religion, worshipping a woman, worshipping the queen of heaven, this goddess. Well, I was driving just here in Tempe the other day, actually it was in Mesa. I was driving down the road, I saw a cemetery, guess what it was called? Queen of heaven cemetery. Queen of heaven cemetery. When I was in Sacramento, California, I saw a church, guess what it was called? Queen of heaven Catholic church. And Mary, they call her the queen of heaven. And so it started the Tower of Babel. Then the Tower of Babel became the location of a city called Babylon. And Babylon had a religion of worshipping the queen of heaven. This woman with her infant son that they worshipped. All the way back, this is way before Jesus was born. We're talking about 700 years before Jesus came along. And this queen of heaven is being worshipped. You'll find that phrase in the book of Jeremiah several times. The queen of heaven, they talk about baking cakes, it's the same religion. Well, I'm going to show you something. Look at verse number 5 again. Mystery Babylon the great, the mother of harlots. Now look, we saw that she's the mother whore. So God says, this is what I think about the Catholic church, this is what I'm going to call it. I'm going to lighten it unto a whore that commits fornication with all these kings of the earth. That's drunk with the blood of the saints. And it's all symbolic here. But, he says, I'm going to call her a whore, but not only that. Not only is she a whore, but she's the mother of harlots. That means that this whore has had several children. And those children are a bunch of little harlots, is what it's saying. So she's the mother whore and she's given birth to these harlot children. Now I'm going to draw something for you on the chart here. And like I said, this is a little more of a teaching thing than maybe a sermon per se. But I'm going to take my marker here and I'm going to draw these. Where is my marker? I felt this in my pocket, I thought it was the marker. Do you have another marker? Where are the... Alright, here we go. I've got a bunch of markers right here. Now, let me show you the progression here. Right here we have at the top the Tower of Babel. This is where this whole thing started, the Tower of Babel. Then underneath that, we come down to a civilization called Babylon. Now this civilization, Babylon, dominated the entire world. This was the first world empire ever in the history of mankind. If you study the book of Daniel, he prophesied that there were going to be four world empires. Remember he sees the vision of a statue that has a gold head, a silver body here, bronze legs, and feet of iron, and then toes of part of iron, part of clay. Four different kingdoms. He said, thou Nebuchadnezzar art the head. That was the Babylonian empire. This is the first empire that took over the entire world. Nebuchadnezzar took over the entire world, and he controlled the world as a worldwide empire. That's Babylon, who they worship being the queen of heaven. Then, you have the other one, the next one is the Medo-Persian empire, which is represented by the arms of the body because it has two different legs, the Medo-Persian empire. Then you have the bronze empire, which was the Greek empire. That was the third world empire that the world has ever seen. And then you have the feet of iron, which is the Roman empire, which was the fourth and final world empire. Then you have the toes of iron and clay, which is basically the revived Holy Roman empire, which is the Roman Catholic Church. Now look, which is going to be the Antichrist, basically. Now look at this. Here's the Tower of Babel. Here's Babylon. Then we come down to 313 AD, when the Roman Catholic Church is started. Now the Roman Catholic Church technically had its origin in 313 AD, when Constantine the Great. There were four Caesars at this time. There was not one Caesar. You start out with Julius Caesar, then you have Caesar Augustus, and on down the line through Nero, Caligula, Claudia, and all these different guys. Well, it came to a point where it had divided into four quadrants of the Roman empire, and there were four different Caesars. Two of them were called Augustus and two of them were called Caesar. Well, Constantine the Great, his father, Constantius Chlorus, was a man who worshipped the sun god, he worshipped this occultic kind of a god system, and his son Constantine the Great, when he took his throne, he was not content to rule his quadrant. He said, I want to rule the entire Roman empire. So this man Constantine had a dream. And of course, this is just out of history books. This is not necessarily the word of God or something. We don't know whether this is all true, but he claims that he had this dream. And he had a dream of a cross in the sky. And he saw this cross in the sky and writing, it said, in this sign, conquer. And he saw that cross, and it said, in this sign, conquer. You can read this in any history book. And what he did was, he said, I'm going to put a cross on all the shields of my men, and when we go fight these battles, because we're going to take over the whole empire again. We're going to bring it back to one leader. And they went out and they put crosses on their shields. And they went out and fought, and they won. And they took over. And here's part of the way that he took power. Up to this point, the Christians were being persecuted by the Roman empire. Nero and men like that beheaded the apostle Paul. They threw the Christians to the lion's den. And they would persecute Christians. You'll see these persecutions in the Bible, in the book of Acts, where they were being persecuted and hated and put in jail. Well, Constantine the Great saw that the Christians were growing and growing and growing, despite all the persecution. And he said, if you can't beat them, join them. He said, I'm going to get these people on my side. I'm going to convert Rome to a Christian nation. I'm going to get these people on my side. Because this is a powerful political force that I can tap into. And so he said, I'm going to get the Christians on my side. I'm going to make it legal to become a Christian. And not only that, I'm going to make Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. And that's what he did. He started to allow Christianity, he was the first Roman Caesar to say Christianity is legal, it's fine. And then he said, not only that, but we're going to make this a Christian nation. So here's what he did. He said, I'm going to get together all these pastors, I mean, of all kinds of Christianity. And even back then, and you'll see this in the book of 1 John. Even back then, there was already all kinds of counterfeit Christianity out there. It didn't take long before work, salvation kind of Christianity was out there. Before they were baptizing babies and doing all kinds of goofy weird things. And so there were all types of Christianity, just like there are all types of Christianity today. And he said, we're all going to get together and we are going to agree on what we believe. Because this guy's goal was world domination. This guy's goal was to have power and to have a united force of Christians. And so here's what he said. We're going to get together, we're going to have these meetings, and we're going to hash out our differences. And we're going to come to a conclusion. He says, I'm going to moderate the meeting. I'm going to be in charge. I'm going to listen to everybody and we're going to decide exactly what we believe as Christians. And we're going to just get this thing nailed down. We're all going to agree. These are called the Council of Nicaea, these different meetings that they had, historical events. And so here's what they did. They get together and they decide, do we believe that Jesus is God or not? Because these are a bunch of phony preachers, a bunch of phony churches from all over. The guy, Constantine, didn't even claim to believe in Jesus. He said, what do I have to do to go to heaven? And his two bishop friends, he had these two bishops that were his advisors. They said, well, that's easy. All you have to do is be baptized, which is obviously not what the Bible teaches. And so he said, well, what happens if I get baptized? They said, well, after you get baptized, you still got to live a good life. Because they said, being baptized will wash all your sins away. But then if you sin again, now you got all the sins again. Obviously, this is all garbage. And so here's what he said. He said, well, this is what I'm going to do. This is literally what he said. He said, I'm going to get baptized on my deathbed because I don't think I can live the Christian life. So I'm just going to wait to get baptized. And that's what he did. Seven days before he died, when he was on his deathbed, seven days before he died, he was baptized. And after he was baptized, he changed out of his kingly apparel and he put on just an all-white clothing, just solid white clothing. Because he's like, I'm just holy now. And he just made sure to not sin for those seven days, supposedly. And then he died and went to hell. But anyway, the point is, this man, his goal was to create a universal church, a Catholic church. One church with one leader, himself being the leader, and all the bishops and everybody and archbishops and bishops and a structure, just like our government has a bureaucracy and a structure, just like the political powers of the world have a structure and a bureaucracy. He said, we're going to do the same thing. And so he set it up with archbishops and bishops and he's at the top and you've got the pyramid of authority. Well, the Roman Catholic Church was formed. Now, anybody who didn't fall in line was persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church. You know, the Christians, they said, no, we don't want anything to do with you. You're not in charge of us. You're not even saved. You're not going to tell us what to do. You're not going to tell us what to preach. We don't care whether you think Jesus is God or not. We believe Jesus is God. We believe the Bible. We don't care what you think the Bible is. We believe the truth and we don't need you telling us what to do. We're independent. We're independent churches. Well, obviously during this time there were always the true believers. On this side is where we're going to put the true believers. John the Baptist came and preached the Gospel and preached the truth. He baptized converts. Then from John the Baptist, of course, the torch was passed to Jesus. Then from Jesus, he passed it on to the apostles. And then from the apostles, you'll see that Paul, in the books of 1 Timothy and Titus, he says, I want you. He says, this is what I do and this is what you need to do. We're going to set up just pastors in every city. He says, we're going to ordain elders in every city. Pastors of local churches all over. And these men are going to run their own church and be totally independent. And so from apostles, we have independent churches that are established all over Asia, all over Europe, all over the Middle East, all over the world. Back to the mother whore here, the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church stayed unified. When the Roman Empire fell around 500 A.D., obviously it fell in phases, but just to be very oversimplified, around 500 A.D., the Roman Empire ceased to exist. What happened is, in its place arose the Holy Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic regime that lasted from approximately 500 A.D. to 1500 A.D. A thousand years of darkness where the Roman Catholic Church ruled the kings of the earth, as we read in Revelation 17 there. Now, the Roman Catholic Church ruled until 1054 A.D. In 1054 A.D. was called the Great Schism, the Great Split. And what happened in 1054 A.D., let me look at my chart here. You have a split off of what we would know as Orthodoxy. And the Roman Catholic Church split down the middle, and all the east side became Orthodox, and all the west side remained Catholic under the power of the Pope. Now, the Orthodox, they made their own Pope, and they basically were exactly the same as the Catholic Church, except they said there's two things we don't agree with. Number one, we don't believe in baptizing by sprinkling, because at this point the Roman Catholic Church was just sprinkling, they weren't baptized. They said, look, we speak Greek, because the way this empire was, the western part spoke Latin. We're talking about Spain, Italy, France, all these countries. They spoke Latin. Well, the east side spoke Greek. Well, now, what is the New Testament originally written in? Greek. Well, in the New Testament there's a word called baptizo in Greek. It's the word baptism. Well, they knew what it meant, because they spoke Greek, and they knew that the word baptize means to dunk something under water. And so they said, we don't believe in sprinkling, because we know what that means, because we speak the original language. You are mixed up by sprinkling. And another thing was, they didn't believe in all the idolatry. They didn't believe in all the icons. They didn't believe that they should have pictures of Jesus and stuff like that. Other than that, they believed all the same things, but they said these two issues, and obviously a lot of it was just a political power play. They said, we don't want to be under the Pope's authority. They found a few things not to agree with. They split off. Now, where did this church come from? It came from the Roman Catholic Church. This is a bunch of Catholics who said, we're going to split off and do our own thing and be separate. So this is 1054 AD right here, the Great Schism. Then, you go on down the line a little bit, and you get to what's called the Protestant Reformation. So right here is the Protestant Reformation. Now, just roughly, we're talking about a period that was around the 1400s, the 1500s, and the 1600s is when this took place, the Protestant Reformation. Now, in the Protestant Reformation, you have three major heads of it that came out of it. The first one we already talked about a little bit. That's Henry VIII. Henry VIII was married to Catherine of Spain. Catherine of Spain produced daughter after daughter. They didn't maybe know the science back then that the man is actually the one who determines the gender, but his wife kept having daughters, and he wanted a male son because he wanted the kingdom to be in his name, and he wanted a male heir. And so he went to the pope and said, Pope, I want to divorce my wife because she cannot produce a male child. And the pope said, no, you can't do that. It's against the Bible. It's against the church. And so divorce is not allowed. Part of the reason is because he dead sure doesn't want him to divorce Catherine of Spain because that's the only way that he had any power where he was getting into England, and Catholic churches were starting to arise all over England through the influence of Catherine of Spain. Before that, Catholicism was illegal, literally, in England. Before Catherine of Spain was his wife. Well, this was the pope's foothold. There's no way he's going to give him a divorce or anything like that. And so Henry VIII said, you know what, fine. I'm going to break off from you, and I'm going to start my own church. I don't want anything to do with the Roman Catholic Church, and I'm going to start my own church. It's going to be called the Church of England, also known as Anglican. And he set it up exactly, you know, very similar to the Catholic Church with the bureaucracy of the archbishops and the bishops, and he was the head of it this time, not the pope. He said, I'm going to be my own pope over here in England, and I'm going to run all the churches in England. This is what he did. He kicked out every Roman Catholic Church. He sent every Roman Catholic out of the country. He exiled them because he was so angry, and he said, I'm splitting off from you. I don't want anything to do with you guys. And he divorced his wife, of course, and he married somebody else. Never had the son, by the way. They just kept having daughters. And so, anyway, and here's what he did. He made it against the law. Here's just a side note. He made it against the law to beat yourself. You say, what? What are you talking about? Well, because the Roman Catholics back then, and there are still Roman Catholics that do this today in the Philippines, they would take whips, and they would beat their body. They would beat themselves with whips. It's called self-flagellation. And they would beat their body and whip themselves because they thought that that earned them favor with God. It's a very satanic, weird religion. And they would abuse their bodies, and they would beat their own body. And he said, number one, every Catholic church is closing its doors. You will be kicked out of the country, all Catholic priests. And number three, he said, beating yourself is illegal. No one is allowed. If we catch you beating yourself, we'll beat you. You know, we'll kill you. But no beating yourself is allowed. Then, you know, a similar time period, you have another man. Now, where did this come from? The Catholic church. It came from the Catholic church. It came from a guy who was a Catholic who didn't like what they were teaching, and he said, I'm going to start my own version of the Catholic church. And he came from the Catholic church. Then, you have another guy named John Calvin. John Calvin was a Catholic priest. He was a Roman Catholic priest, and he said, I don't agree with what the church is doing. I don't agree on some doctrinal things. And so I'm going to break off from the Catholic church. I'm going to start my own church. He started his own church in Geneva, Switzerland. And he turned Geneva into literally a fascist police state that was run by the church. He executed a man that was a Jew, just for being a Jew, because he was not a Christian. He executed another man just for not believing in his doctrine. And he said, I don't agree with the Roman Catholic church. I'm breaking off and starting my own church. Now, this man is most famous for what's called Calvinism. Now, in my tract here, because a lot of Baptists are screwed up on this, I have my tract here in what we believe in the statement of faith that says, we reject the teaching of Calvinism and believe that God wants everyone to be saved. Because Calvinists teach that God chooses who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. God decides, before any of us were even born, you go to heaven, you go to hell, you go to heaven, you go to hell, you go to hell, you go to hell, you go to hell, based on nothing. Not based on how good we are, not based on whether we believe on Jesus. It's just up to Him. And so if you got saved, it's only because God chose you. And so we don't really need to go soul hunting, because if they're going to get saved, they're going to get saved. If they're not going to get saved, they're not going to get saved. There's nothing we can do about it. Either you're chosen or you're not. That's nothing to do with anything you can do about it. Now, what kind of a sick God would just damn people to hell without even giving them a choice about it? Why do you even create them? They didn't even ask to be created. He just creates them and damns them to hell? That's ridiculous. So that's what this guy believed. Well, he had a follower named John Knox. John Knox was in Scotland, and he started what's called the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, based on the teachings of John Calvin, based on Calvinism, and based on his teachings. Now, another branch of this, and I'm oversimplifying things a little bit, but I'm just trying to make it understandable just so you get the gist of where these things came from. Then you have a guy named Martin Luther. Martin Luther was in the country of Germany. He was, again, a Catholic priest. Here is a Catholic priest who was reading his Bible one day, and all of a sudden he's in a monastery. Let me tell you the whole story. He's out in a storm, and there's lightning, and he struck a tree next to him, and he got so scared that he said, God, if you let me get out of this alive, then I will become a Catholic priest. And so he got out of it alive, and he became a Catholic priest. He's studying for the priesthood in some monastery somewhere, and he's just reading the Bible over and over and doing all the Catholic stuff. He's got a beer in his hand, and he's reading the Bible with a beer in his hand, and he says, The just shall live by faith. Wow! We're supposed to be saved by faith, is what he says, not by works, supposedly. And then he says, this is wrong, because at this point the Catholic Church was literally selling people what's called indulgences, like a ticket to heaven. If you buy, you can buy sins forgiven. And they still sell them to this day, by the way. People don't know about this. It's very rare. But it's basically, you can buy good works. You don't have to do the good work. You can buy to have your sins forgiven. This will get you out of purgatory sooner. And guess what? Your loved one, this is what they would do. They'd say, we found out some bad stuff that he was doing. So, I think he's going to be in purgatory for a long time. But if you give us a thousand dollars, we can buy him indulgences that will actually get some of his sins forgiven, so that he can get out of purgatory sooner. And I go, man, I've got to get some money. They're poor Uncle Robert. It turns out he's burning in purgatory, which doesn't exist, obviously. And so he was against indulgences. This is why. Now, first of all, number one, does somebody get saved by reading the Bible? And a light bulb goes on there? No, the Bible says, how shall they hear without a preacher? The Bible says that people get saved because some born-again person gives them the gospel and wins them to the Lord and gives them saved. Not just by reading the Bible and the light bulb goes on there. And here's what he does that he decided. He decided that salvation is by faith, except he believed that you had to get baptized and that you had to take the Lord's Supper to be saved. He literally believed. And I don't care what you think about what he believed, because I have a book written by him, his catechism, that he taught to his followers later on in life and everything. And it says you must be baptized to wash away your sins. You must take the Lord's Supper. He said he believed in purgatory. You can read the 95 Thesis. People will try to tell you, Baptists will try to tell you that the 95 Thesis was anti-Catholic. He says in the 95 Thesis that the same power that the Pope has to forgive sins, every priest in his parish has the same power to forgive sins. That's what he believed. He just didn't think that the Pope should be selling tickets to heaven. But he still believed that priests could forgive sins. He still believed that you had to be baptized to go to heaven. And he still believed that you had to take the Lord's Supper and that it literally was the body and blood of Jesus Christ. That if you didn't consume that cracker that became human flesh, you would not go to heaven. That's what he believed. It's a historical fact. You can look that up in any book. That's the truth. Well, of course, from him comes the Lutheran Church. Now, look, who was this guy? Where did he come from? He was a Catholic priest. He was a Catholic priest that started a religion, just broke off from the Catholic Church, and he pretty much just kept most of what they believed. He kept the same hierarchy, and he kept most of the beliefs. There were just a few things that he didn't agree with. Just like John Calvin, just a few things that he didn't agree with. Henry VIII, just a couple things. He didn't agree with beating yourself. He didn't agree with the divorce thing. And so these are the three main heads of the Reformation Lutheran Presbyterian Church of England. Now, from Church of England comes Episcopalian. Episcopalian is just another name for Church of England. It's what they were called in America. Well, an Episcopalian priest. So he's pretty much just like a Roman Catholic priest. He just believes a few things differently. His name is John Wesley. John Wesley, an Episcopalian priest, said, I'm an Episcopalian, and I believe like an Episcopalian, which is pretty much a Roman Catholic. But he said, I think we should get back to some of the original methods that were used in the New Testament, back to the Bible a little bit. And so he said, I'm going to start Methodist Episcopalian churches. And he said, these are going to be Episcopalian churches that are a little more back to the original beliefs, a little more back to fundamentalism. So he's like, fundamental Episcopalianism. And he says, we're going to get back to the old school kind of teaching. Now this guy right here, let me tell you some things that he believed. He wrote a whole book, and I've read his book. He wrote a book on why eternal security is wrong. He wrote a whole book going through every argument that we use to tell people, you cannot lose your salvation. You're a child of God. Once you're God's son, you'll always be God's son. I give unto them eternal life, and no man shall pluck them out of my hand. He that believeth on me, he that hears my word and believeth on him that sent me, has everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death to life. Now you know, look, are my sons going to stop being my sons? Never. They're my sons. And so, obviously we believe in eternal security. Good night. And by the way, if you don't believe in eternal security, you're not saved, because you're trusting work salvation. It's just another side of the coin. You don't have to work to get it, you just have to work to keep it. You know, you just have to live right to keep it. Either way, you're just saying you have to live right to go to heaven. It's the same thing. So this guy starts the Methodist movement. Now let me put in a small disclaimer. At the same time as this guy, was another guy named George Whitfield. Now George Whitfield was called a Methodist, but he believed in eternal security. And he said, John Wesley's a heretic. And he said, I'm going to separate from John Wesley because he's wrong. And George Whitfield believed in eternal security. And believed the gospel, but he still called a Methodist, and he still has all these John Wesley teachings that screwed him up. Besides the eternal security, he still had all the other stuff. Where did it all really come from? The Roman Catholic Church. It just came from the Roman Catholic Church, to the Church of England, to the Episcopalian, to the Methodist. And then it spilled over to George Whitfield. And so there have been Methodists that I've met that are saved. There have been Methodist churches through the years that have been saved. But by and large, this church has never believed the gospel. It is by and large the Methodist. Today, the United Methodist Church has 10% of their pastors are homosexuals, avowed homosexuals. 50% women pastors, 50% men pastors, 10% homosexual. George W. Bush, our president, goes to an Episcopalian church right now. His pastor is a woman, the deacon is a dyke, a lesbian, excuse me. And so this is where George W. Bush goes to church, at an Episcopalian lesbian church. Then, that's in Washington, D.C. there. And he can go to whatever church he wants as the president. That's where he chooses to go. Then from the Methodists, you have a further split off that becomes more fundamental, and they were called the Nazarenes. Now, just to give you a timeline here, this stuff was the 14, 15, 1600s when the Reformation was happening. John Wesley, now we're into the 1700s. The Nazarenes, now we're into the 1800s. The Nazarenes broke off from the Methodist church, and they still believe you can lose your salvation. In fact, they're vehemently that you can lose your salvation. They still believe in speaking, this is where the tongues movement started in the 1800s with the Nazarenes. Now, John Wesley also believed that you did not get the Holy Spirit when you get saved. Like, the Holy Spirit does not live inside of you. It's something that you get later by, like, begging and praying. And like, you just, like, lay on your face all night and beg God before the Holy Spirit will ever indwell you. He's obviously totally wrong on that. The Bible says that Christ in you, the hope of glory, says that the Holy Ghost dwelleth inside of you, except you be reprobated. He said, look, if you're saved, you've got the Holy Spirit living inside of you, of course. So the Nazarenes came about in the 1800s. And again, you can lose your salvation, it's a work of salvation. Then, the Nazarenes in the 1800s, this is where the tongues movement came out, all the talking and gibberish, slobbering, barking like a dog, laughing hysterically, falling on the ground, rolling up and down the aisle, stuff came from. Well, this split off just into a million different directions. Because these people are so goofy and insane, they couldn't agree on anything. And so, they become Church of God. Church of Christ. Church of God in Christ. They're like, man, I can't think of a name, all the good names are being taken. Church of God's taken, Church of Christ. Oh, Church of God in Christ, okay. And then, you also get from this the Assemblies of God. This is all break offs of the Nazarenes, Assemblies of God. Then you've got the, let's see, I'm trying to think of some of the other names of these. Four Square is another one. Four Square is another denomination that's in there. And on and on. These are all, what we would know, these four that I just listed, you know, Church of God, Church of Christ, Assemblies of God, Church of God in Christ, Four Square. All of these are grouped together and known as Pentecostal churches. They're known as Charismatic churches, Pentecostals. They all have one thing in common. They all believe totally, you know, different things on small subjects. They all have one thing in common. They all believe you can lose your salvation. And they all believe in speaking in tongues. This is your non-denominational crowd. This is your so and so Christian church, so and so community church. And they're non-denominational. Here's how you can tell what they really are. You can't tell by the name on the sign. You look them up in the yellow pages. And they will be under these denominations. Look them up in the yellow pages. You'll go to Church of God in Christ. You'll see, wait, I thought that was a non-denominational church. No, Church of God in Christ. They're just hiding from you what they really are. Oh, it's Four Square. Oh, it's Assemblies of God. Oh, it's Church of God. Oh, it's Church of Christ. Church of Christ believes that there's seven steps to salvation, one of which is being baptized. You've got to do seven different things to be saved. They all believe you can lose it. Imagine, you've got to do seven things and then you can lose it. Well, we believe you do one thing and you never lose it. It's nice. Anyway, this is the Pentecostal crowd. Now, you're starting to see why. You probably wonder, just driving around, why are there all these different denominations? Where did they come from? Now you know where they came from. This is where they came from. Guess where they came from. They all came from the Roman Catholic Church, every single one of them. This is the mother whore, and these are all the little harlots that came from the mother whore. This is the mother of harlots and abominations. Now, what are we seeing today? Oh, I left one out. Out of the Methodists, you have another group called the African Methodist Episcopalians, AME. You ever heard of AME churches, African Methodist Episcopalians? And then, out of them, you have the African Methodist Episcopalians of Zion, which I don't know what the difference is, but they broke off again. This is just more Charismatics, more Pentecostals. Well, here's what you see going on right now, and this is where it fits in with the Book of Revelation. And this is why it's in the Book of Revelation, talking about the judgment of the whore, and God talks about in this how basically the Antichrist is going to turn against the Roman Catholic Church, turn against the whore, and destroy this institution, and that's the judgment of the great whore that you see in Revelation 17. But, what you're seeing happen right now as we speak in the world is that all the little babies are going back to mama. They're all coming home to mama, and that's why you have what's called the ecumenical movement. All of these churches no longer want to be separate. They no longer want to be against each other. I mean, there were times when these people killed each other, literally. Catholics and Protestants were killing each other, but now they're saying, no, we don't want to do that anymore. We want to all get along. I remember when I was in Germany several years ago, I picked up a newspaper and started reading, and the head guy of the Catholic Church in Germany and the head guy of the Lutheran Church in Germany, they said, you know what, the Reformation was just all just a big misunderstanding. All those people that were getting killed and killing each other and everything, it was all just a big misunderstanding, and we get along great. And nowadays in Germany, the Lutherans and the Catholics are like one and the same. I mean, they're just like two peas in a pod. There's no difference. All across America, you go to these churches, none of these churches will say anything negative about Catholics anymore. I'm not saying negative about Catholics, but about Catholicism. If you go to a Christian bookstore today, you'll find Catholic paraphernalia. Now, they'll be against the Mormons. They'll be against the Jehovah's Witnesses at the Christian bookstore. They will not speak out against Mama, because they're going back to Mama. And what you're going to see in the Bible, the one-world religion where the Antichrist is at the head, where in Revelation 13, where everybody worships the Antichrist, and all the religions of the world are united together, and all the governments of the world are united together, all these people are going back to Mama. In 2000, I was in Sacramento, and they had a thing called Jesus Christ Jubilee 2000, where it was put on by a Roman Catholic bishop. There were Southern Baptist churches there, there were North American Baptist churches there, there were Mormons there, there were Presbyterians there, there were Methodists there, they all got together and had one big service, one preacher, a Catholic priest. All the Christian rock bands were there, and Baptists were there. I mean, everybody was there, every one of these denominations here. Now, the Southern Baptists, I want to say this, the Southern Baptists kind of got mixed up a little bit with this Nazarene crowd back in the 1800s, and that's why they have some of the things from Mama, too. Even though Southern Baptists, there was a time when Southern Baptists were gospel preaching, fiery, great churches that believed the faith. Now, back over here to the right side. Go down the line from these independent churches started by the Apostles, started by Titus, started by Timothy. Well, you come to a group called the Anabaptists, and this predates the Reformation, because people will try to make you think that we're Protestants as Baptists. They'll try to make you think that Baptists were part of this. Like, oh, the Protestant Reformation, that's when the Presbyterians and the Methodists came out of that whole thing. No. See, the Baptists were never part of this system right here. The Anabaptists were called Anabaptists. The word Anabaptists means rebaptizer, like somebody who baptizes again. And the Anabaptists were called Anabaptists, because they would take somebody who was sprinkled as a baby, they'd win them to Christ, and then they'd rebaptize them. They'd baptize them again. And the Roman Catholic Church said it is illegal to rebaptize somebody. They said if you baptize somebody who's already been baptized by the Catholic Church, you will be put to death. And they literally executed thousands of people for rebaptizing conference. And so this was a derogatory term that was given to them. Anabaptists, these rebaptizers who were baptizing people and getting people saved. You can read literature, and I used to be an incessant reader of history and everything. Nowadays I don't really read it, but you can read literature from this time period, all about the Anabaptists and what they did. They were being persecuted and everything like that in Europe and so forth. Anabaptists are the forefathers of today what we call Baptists. So the very term Baptist is a name that comes from the fact that we were diametrically opposed from the Roman Catholic Church. I mean, it is a name that was given to us by the Catholics. These dirty, rotten rebaptizers, these Anabaptists. It's against the law. We want them dead. And that's who we are. That's who we are as Baptists. See, we didn't come out of mama. We're not like the Presbyterians. They came out of mama, and that's why they're so much like mama. That's why they teach you to work your way to heaven. That's why the Episcopales are so much like mama. That's why the Methodists say you've got to do good works to keep your salvation. That's why it's all. That's why the Methodists got his collar backwards, like mama. Even Missionary Baptists and some of these that are Pentecostals, that's why they got their collar backwards. I've seen them in Chicago. Missionary Baptist churches, they wear their collar backwards like mama, like a Catholic priest. They're just like mama because, you know what, the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree, let's face it. And all these denominations came straight out of mama. They're just like mama. They all have their own pope. The Southern Baptists have their own pope. What's his name? Charles Stanley. Runs the Southern Baptist Convention, or whoever it is now. And then the United Methodists have a leader. I don't know what his name is. The Presbyterians have leaders. And they have that same political system set up by Constantine the Great in 313. And on and on down the list. This is why I'm a Baptist. Because I don't want to be in this family tree of harlots and hookers and whores. Because this is a wicked, ungodly religion. And I want to tell you something. I'm tired of Baptists who won't get up and preach against the whore and say, look, this is wrong. Everything about it is wrong. They're going to hell. It's a wicked religion. I was in a Baptist church as a teenager and they were saying good things about Mother Teresa. How wonderful she was. Saying good things about Pope John Paul II, how wonderful he was. Look, I know they did so much humanitarian aid. I know they put food in somebody's mouth and then they damn their soul to hell. They put food in their mouth so they could live a little longer before they burn in hell. And I have no love for this institution right here, the Roman Catholic Church. And I'm not afraid to get up and say that this institution is straight out of hell and I can't wait until this prophecy is fulfilled in Revelation 17 when God says, I'm going to end the Roman Catholic Church. I'm going to end Mystery Babylon. I'm going to end this wicked, ungodly religion once and for all. Well, see this Bible right here? This is the King James Bible. This Bible right here was translated from a totally different source than the Roman Catholic Bible, the Latin Vulgate. And there are many other Roman Catholic Bibles. Well, the Latin Vulgate, among other Catholic versions were the Bible used by the Roman Catholic Church all through the Dark Ages. Well, you have a man come on the scene named John Wycliffe. John Wycliffe, and there was another guy, Johann Gutenberg, and I believe one of them invented the printing press. I think Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press. John Wycliffe invented the movable type printing press. They invented the printing press for one reason, to print Bibles. Well, John Wycliffe began to translate the Bible. Here's the problem. He was translating from these kinds of manuscripts, this Catholic version. And he was translating it and he started to work on it. They burned him at the stake. They killed him. Because they didn't want the Bible to be translated into the common man's language in England. The Catholic Church was dominating them. So, then comes a man named William Tyndale. William Tyndale took the correct manuscripts that these guys had been using. The correct manuscripts had been passed down and passed down and used by Christians all over the world. All over Syria there were millions and millions of copies. Not the few copies that the Roman Catholic Church had chained to the pulpit in their church. But the Bibles that were being passed around and passed around and people had in their home and used. He took those correct manuscripts of the Textus Receptus, the Greek received text of the New Testament. And the Masoretic Hebrew text. William Tyndale translated the Bible into English. And when William Tyndale translated it, he was in the middle of doing it and of course they got him. They killed him. They burned him at the stake. They lit him on fire and burned him to death. And when he was dying, he said, Open the eyes of the King of England. It was like his last words when he was being burned at the stake. About 80 years later or so, King James ascended the throne in England. And the first thing he did was said, We're going to translate the Bible into the English language. And we're going to have one perfect copy of the Bible. We're going to get together. They spent years on it. They had 54 people doing it and on and on. And God's hand was in it to preserve his word and to deliver it to us today. The King James Version and the Tyndale Bible are almost identical. Because they were translated from the same thing. William Tyndale translated it from the right stuff. He wasn't translating some Catholic Bible. Well, every modern version is based on Catholic manuscripts. Because what happened is, in the 1800's, and I talked about this recently in a sermon, but they dug up, I think this was on Sunday morning when I was preaching to the King James Bible, they dug up these new manuscripts. Guess where they found them? One of them was found at the Vatican. One of them was found in a monastery. And one of them was found in Alexandria, Egypt. There are three manuscripts. Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and there's some other one that I forget the name of it. And they said these are older, more reliable. That's where they translated the NIV and the New American Standard. Let me read to you something quickly. I don't have my handy-dandy NIV, but I can quote it for you. 1 Corinthians 9.27. 1 Corinthians 9.27 in the NIV says, I beat my body and make it my slave. That's what it says. That's sick. That's perverted. That's Roman Catholic doctrine. 1 Corinthians 9.27 says, I beat my body and make it my slave. All the modern Bibles say that. The King James Bible says nothing like that. It says I keep under my body and bring it into subjection. He says I keep my body in subjection. That means I'm in charge, not my flesh. But they say, no, I beat my body. The same thing, they take out Acts 8.37, which says that you have to be saved before you get baptized. They remove all these verses because they're Catholic Bibles. They came from this mother whore. And let me tell you something. This Bible has never agreed with the whore. This Bible has never had anything to do with this crowd. My Baptist heritage as a fundamental Baptist had nothing to do with this whore. It had nothing to do with stained glass windows. It had nothing to do with working your way to heaven. It had nothing to do with giving up your sins and confessing them to get saved. It had nothing to do with work salvation, losing your salvation. A bunch of popes telling me what to do. A bunch of pastors somewhere trying to run my church from some other city somewhere, like the Catholic Zoo and their big organization. Hey, I want to tell you something. This church is a Baptist church, not because that's just what I grew up. It's a Baptist church because this is who we are. We're not part of this family tree. We're part of this family tree right here that comes straight down the line from Jesus Christ and from John the Baptist. John the Baptist, not John the Methodist, not John the Presbyterian, not John the Lutheran, not John the Church of God in Christ, not John the American African Methodist, Piscopalian, Zion, not John non-denom John, but John the Baptist. And Jesus Christ and the apostles and independent churches all over the world with their own Bible, passing the Bible around in everybody's hand, encouraging people to read the Bible, not shaming it to the pulpit, passing the Bible around to everybody. The Anabaptists who are in trouble for baptizing converse that they were winning to Christ out of the Catholic church, all the way down to the Baptists, all the way down to today, we have to call ourselves independent Baptists because we're not yoked up in one of these denominations like the Southern Baptists and the North American Baptists who are just patterned after the whore, where they got their little denomination telling them what to do. They got their pope and they got their archbishops and they got their cardinals. And no, my mama is not a whore is what I'm telling you tonight. I'm glad that my mama is not a whore. I'm glad that my father is Jesus Christ. I don't have the queen of heaven mother whore as my ancestor. I've got the Baptists that have died and gone before me. I've got the William Tyndales. I've got the apostles. I've got Jesus. I've got John the Baptist. And see, that's why it's so important to be a Baptist. That's why it's important. That's why I don't put community church on my side. You think I want people to think this is where I'm at right here? The great, great granddaughter of the Roman Catholic church? You think I want people to think that I might be something like this? Or something like that? No. I want people to know that I don't have nothing to do with this. I'm a Baptist. I don't have anything to do with this. Totally separate. And so that's why it's so important to be a Baptist. Now look, maybe this wasn't the most exciting term. I'll be honest with you. Maybe it wasn't some kind of a practical thing where you can go home and this is going to change your life. But you better know what you believe. And you better know why it's not right to go to these churches. Because you'll go there and this is what you're going to find every time. You're going to find the resemblance. You're going to say, wow, you look a lot like your mom. When you walk into Episcopalian church, it looks like mom. When you walk into a Methodist church, you're going to see a lot of things that look just like mommy. And when you walk into some of these Baptist churches like I was reading you from, you'll find stuff that looks like mom. You've got to know this. You've got to realize that you're not a Protestant. You're not a Catholic. You're a Baptist and you're a Baptist for a reason. Because you're separated from that institution right there. Look, everything goes back to this right here. Like it or not, this is where the wrong Bible versions have come from. This is where the work of salvation has come from all the way back to the Tower of Babel. This is where the idolatry has come from. This is where all the wicked stuff has come from and it's all going back to that when the Antichrist is going to take power of this machine right here. And you are seeing it everywhere we go at ecumenical services. Billy Graham comes into town. How do you think he gets 30,000 people? How do you think he gets 50,000 people? Because all of these people are going. And they're putting aside their differences. They're putting aside their differences as Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Southern Baptists, Pentecostals. They say we're going to put aside our differences and we're all just going to get together and just worship God. And that's what you're going to see in the end times that we're living in. Everybody getting together. Everybody putting it all together and becoming back with Mama. And the Antichrist is going to take power of this machine and that's what you're seeing. That's why it's so important for us to stand up and say, no, I'm a Baptist. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, I thank you so much for our heritage as Baptists, dear God.