Question: To the best of my understanding, the Roman Catholic Church does emphatically teach and ...

Question: I have read and profited from your excellent book, A Woman Rides the Beast. ...And yet, 1 John 4 gives us a scriptural “litmus test” for recognizing the difference between the Spirit of God and the spirit of Antichrist....To the best of my understanding, the Roman Catholic Church does emphatically teach and confess the truth of this doctrine [that “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh”] as distinguished from the many pseudo­Christian cults which explicitly deny it. If that is the case, then doesn’t it follow that the Spirit of God must still be speaking in some fashion through the Roman Catholic Church, and that it cannot be considered completely apostate?

Response: Thank you for your encouraging remarks concerning A Woman Rides the Beast. I don’t understand, however, what you mean by “completely apostate.” Apostate is apostate. If a church preaches a false gospel that damns the soul (as Catholicism, like Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons, does) is it any consolation that it does affirm some truth (as all three do)? Obviously not. A false gospel that damns the soul is a false gospel that damns the soul even if some elements of it may be biblical.

Does the Roman Catholic Church pass the test of 1 John 4, “every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God,” and therefore “cannot be considered completely apostate”? No. The English “is come” in the King James follows the Greek construction, which means “came once for all time.” The body that Jesus took when He “was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (Jn 1: 14) was resurrected and He still occupies that body in glory, and will forever.

This fact obviously eliminates reincarnation. It also eliminates the Roman Catholic Mass. In that alleged “sacrifice” it is claimed that Christ comes again and again “in flesh” through priests turning wafers into Jesus Christ, whole and entire, body, soul, spirit and divinity, to be ingested into the stomachs of the faithful for the forgive- ness of their sins.

Furthermore, even if the Roman Catholic Church passed this test, that would not mean that she preaches the true gospel of Jesus Christ, which, of course, she does not. First John 4 does not say that to confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh means that everything else this person or group may say is therefore also of God. Balaam said much that was from God, even giving valid prophecies, but he also said much not from God and is in hell today.

Yes, Roman Catholicism does teach some truth: that Jesus is fully God and fully man, born of a virgin, died for our sins on the cross, rose the third day and is coming again. Yet even the truth which it teaches it perverts: Mary is the immaculately conceived, ever virgin “mother of God,” Jesus is still dying in the sacrifice of the Mass, and His death upon the cross nearly 2,000 years ago was not sufficient to save but He must be “immolated” perpetually on Catholic altars, and ingested into one’s stomach to provide increments of salvation. Such teachings constitute “another gospel” and warrant Paul’s anathema (Gal:1:6-9 [6] I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: [7] Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. [8] 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. [9] As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.
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