Apologetics

Peoples Misconception About the Church Founded by Jesus Christ

by Maurice A. Williams
10/15/22
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By Maurice A. Williams

I’m astounded by the misunderstanding so many people have about the Catholic Faith. Most people voice petty misunderstandings of things that bother them about Catholicism, but very few of them actually get to the core of who God is and what we are as His Church.

Let’s start at the beginning: God is God. There is only one God. He created everything that exists. He is the supreme ruler of His creation, and His will must be obeyed by everything and everyone He created. Even in the prayer that Jesus taught us, we pray in unison with all believers that His will “be done on earth as it is in heaven.” There is no getting around this. God’s will must be obeyed by everyone or else there would be chaos in heaven as there obviously is on earth.

What are we then? We are beings God created, and we are dependent upon Him to fulfill the reason why He created us.

Catholics constitute more than 1.3 billion of the world’s Christian population while Protestants are about 900 million believers worldwide. There are profound differences in beliefs between the two expressions of Christian faith. Catholics are more uniform in their beliefs because of the central authority of the papacy and Tradition. Protestants are much more diverse in their beliefs because there is no central authority.

Unseen by us, God also created a huge spiritual world populated by angels. They are required to obey God, just as we humans are. Sadly, one third of them refused obedience and joined in the rebellion of Lucifer, an exceptionally gifted angel created by God to serve as the bright Morning Star. His original vocation was to be a source of illumination to others, especially humans, to explain who God is and what God expects.

His rebellion brought evil into God’s creation – “darkness” as the Bible puts it – and ignorance of God’s desires enveloped the whole world. There was a civil war in the spiritual heaven and the rebellious angels, now devils, were cast out of heaven and onto earth, where God, in His good time, will punish them after they do battle with the human race.

God created the angels perfect, but even in their perfection they refused obedience to God. Later on, God created Adam and Eve, the source of the human race, and permitted Lucifer to try to induce them to disobey. They did disobey, and God punished them also, but not as severely as He punished the devils.

Adam and Eve were perfect before they refused obedience, but they were misinformed by a superior spiritual being whose superiority enabled him to make fools of them, and that’s why they chose incorrectly. As a result, God punished Adam and Eve with many hardships and with physical death. They were immortal before they rebelled, but afterwards, they, and every human descended from them, had to endure death.

All subsequent human beings have been born within this disgrace of their parent’s original wrongdoing. But when God deals with humans, He is merciful. He offers us redemption. If we recognize we are wrong and that He is correct, He will not only forgive us, He will redeem us and restore us back to the same condition Adam and Eve had before they rebelled.

God did not offer redemption to the angels. They refused obedience when they were perfect, and that refusal still stands.

There are two explanations as to why God will never forgive the angels. One is that not a single devil will ever repent or feel contrite about what he did. The other explanation is that God is unforgiving of devils even if they were to repent. However, if no devil will ever repent, then the case is closed, and there is no justification for anyone to label God as unforgiving.

God wanted the followers of Jesus to “Go into the whole world.” and baptize all peoples, bringing them into His heavenly kingdom. I don’t think He wanted His followers to conquer the nations, make slaves of their residents, and strip them of their wealth and land.

History shows many disgraceful ways some Christians have complied with this mandate, and we are all paying for it today. The most recent reaction to them is the “woke” mentality condemning everything they did and tearing down monuments and place names honoring those who were involved in the evangelization of the world.

I caution everybody not to take part in this condemnation. God knows who did evil in past generations, and He is perfectly capable of punishing them. If fact, all who have left this life are already, in the spiritual realm, living the reward for their righteousness or enduring the punishment for their wickedness.

After all, our own rebelliousness deserves even more punishment. God wants us to lead others to repentance before God because God will forgive them, and we should be willing to forgive them also.

At the end of the world, God will judge every human being and every angel He created and will reunite every human being with the mortal flesh they would have had if evil had never occurred.

God still wants us to evangelize the nations, but particularly to teach our children about the real God and the spiritual world as God revealed it. Our children are bombarded by false information and alluring speculation about world argued by the wicked from all sides causing our children to lose faith is the Gospel preached by Jesus. We need to be aware of this and train our children to recognize the truth about these issues to avoid them being led away from the faith we are convinced to be authentic.