Candy on end times and other stuff

First of all, kudos to Candy Brauer at www.keepingthehome for changing her blog motif to Advent purple!  Very seasonal, very liturgical and quite unexpected! Maybe lurking on our Catholic site is starting to rub off on her!

I often wonder what newbies think when they click on a link to Keeping the Home and then have to read about the Rapture?

Anyway Candy's newest is Keeping The Home: The Rapture. I don't think most people actually read everything she writes, (and also since she keeps removing stuff I think it is important to not only link to her posts, but also to copy and paste the important parts) so here is a sample of some of her most outrageous stuff. (Bolded emphasis mine)

This is a famine more serious than that of the lack of food and water, for this famine is of the Word of God. The word of God has been slowly being replaced through the years with counterfeit translations. I'm speaking about new version Bibles that are being translated by homosexuals, lesbians, occultists, witches, new agers, and other such people claiming that they are Bible scholars. Many of these translators have already received some judgment from God for their translation deceptions. Some of these so-called "scholars" have lost their voices for no apparent medical reason, for example. Some of the scholars thought they were doing a good thing, and have learned of their error, and have repented and turned to God, and now speak out against these counterfeit translations.

Back in Genesis 3:15, we find the first prophecy of Jesus Christ. Satan also heard that prophecy, and he understood it. He tried to counterfeit that prophecy, via Nimrod. In secular ancient history, we learn the name of Nimrod's wife: Semiramis. The Bible calls her Ashtoreth, Astarte, etc. She is also known as Ishtar, Easter, Diana, and many other names that you can learn from a well-read Wiccan. Meanwhile, Nimrod became known as Moloch, etc. Nimrod died, and Semiramis came up pregnant, claiming that she had not lain with a man. This child of Semiramis became known as Baal.

Even this very day, one can easily track down shrines to this "virgin" Semiramis and "savior" son Baal. You'll find her and her son under various different names, such as:

- Shing Moo
- Devaki and Crishna
- Diana
- Isis and Horus
- Aphrodite (The Mediatrix)
- Venus and Jupiter
- Ashtoreth and Baal
- The Queen of Heaven

I dare say that some religions worship Semiramis and Baal under the names Mary and Jesus. You can tell the false Mary and Jesus from the real ones, via the way the people worship them. Are they bowing down to statues and figurines of Mary and Jesus? Are these people praying to Mary as the "mediatrix," instead of to God, in Jesus' name?

"For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;" 1 Timothy 2:5

Many people will fall into religions that worship the counterfeit Mary and Jesus. They will fall into these cults because of their ignorance of the Word of God, or because they are reading the new Bible versions that have been translated from extremely errant manuscripts translated by ignorant or ungodly people.

You see, just as Satan tried to create his own counterfeit savior of the world, he also is creating his own counterfeit Bibles. He'll put in just enough truth in these Bibles to draw many people in, but there will also be some deceptions interwoven in these translations. Jesus warns of this type of deception, when He told us that "a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." In other words, only some of the Bible needs to be corrupted, and the corruption will eventually work it's way through its reader's very spirit.

Therefore, the great deception and falling away will come in many forms, but will have one main goal: that of distracting, or turning people away from the One True God and His One Way to heaven.

This deception will be in various forms. After all, people are different, and it takes different vices to tickle their flesh. The Bible tells us that the delusions will be so strong, that even the very elect could be deceived, if God allows. God will protect his true elect, and, as you will see, the elect will not be here for the full 7-year tribulation. However, I believe that they will also not be raptured before the tribulation either…

We handled the statue thing here and here among other places. Kelly discussed bible translations here. We have the Mediatrix discussion many times on this blog.  See here.

Candy likes to brag about using the best translation.  Well, in her opinion anyway.  But we have used this article several times to rebut that.   Here is the gist of it:

KJV advocates weave together many fantastic stories about the origins of the Alexandrian texts and the reason why we must reject their use in light of the TR. However, there is no credible historical evidence remotely hinting at the claim these texts were doctored by unorthodox apostates to secretly introduce theological heresy into the Christian faith. On the contrary, what they do demonstrate is how our sovereign God preserves His Word through the means of human instruments. A family of manuscripts discovered in the 1800s dating to just 200 years after Christ, apart from the typical variants, reads almost the same as all the other NT documents copied over a period of nearly 1600 years. Instead of denying God's preservation, they establish it.

I always think the best way to rebutt Candy's claim that people are Catholic because they don't know scripture, is to show a Catholic convert who absolutely knows scripture and in fact converted to Catholicism because of that knowledge!  So for your reading pleasure, I present Musings of  Catholic Convert  the Blog of a fomer Southern Baptist Pastor who became Catholic. His conversion story is here.  Oh and to prove that this gentleman really understood his scripture sources, here is an excerpt of his story:

story, how to become catholic, how to join catholic, southern baptist to catholic

I’ve never been adept at learning foreign languages, but for some reason Greek came fairly easy to me. I became so fond of Greek that I minored in it and took as many classes as I could. Studying the language opened my eyes to the depths of Scripture. It showed me how easily tools like interlinear texts and language concordances (like Strong’s) can be misused, leading to egregious theological error. Without a proper understanding of Greek language, writer/audience culture, and the historical context in which something was written you can really get into trouble. By the way, if you haven’t studied Koine or Classical Greek, you’re missing out. Not only is this a great apologetics tool, but also a wonderful aid to understanding of God’s Word (In addition to most of the NT being written in Greek, the OT of Christ’s time was a greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures called the Septuagint or LXX). It’s also a way to see what Aesop’s Fables REALLY say.
Studying Greek helped me to learn and apply sound hermeneutical principles so that I was not trying to interpret Scripture according to my own presuppositions (or at least admitting them up front). In fact, our professor would pick difficult passages in order to challenge our thinking, and then he would play devil’s advocate. This solidified good thinking, logical presentation/defense, and sound interpretation skills.
As a side note here, dispensational eschatology fell like a brick, and I realized that I had made critical errors in my assumptions about the end times. What a scary thing to be sitting in a pew and hear a minister (not just Baptists) telling you what “this word in the Greek” means, and then to hear him apply a meaning you know is nowhere near the word’s meaning or context. It didn’t happen often, but often enough to make me want to ALWAYS be sure I understood the passage in its context before I taught it. I took (and still take) the stricter judgement on teachers, as explained in the Bible, very seriously. As a result I read and studied everything as if my life depended on it. That doesn’t mean I didn’t make mistakes, but I knew what was required of me.
Greek did something else for me. In the advanced classes, we translated extra-biblical literature. We were sharpened in our language skills because nobody could fudge a translation simply because he/she had an english scripture memorized (and that is soooooooo easy to notice, and a bad practice to adopt). We translated Aesop, the Didache (teaching of the 12 Apostles), and even some of the Church Fathers. It was this step in my growth that made me want to know what the ancient Church REALLY looked like, especially after learning that the LXX contained the deuterocanonical books Protestants call “apocrypha”, and also after reading the practices and theology of the Church in writings like 1 Clement, and the Didache. They didn’t sound very Baptist to me and that made me uncomfortable. AND I found my hero, St. Polycarp (who is now my patron saint, along with St. Clement). What an awesome testimony to Jesus Christ! If you haven’t read about these guys, shame on you.

But more importantly, CANDY HAS NEVER REBUTTED OUR STRONG STATEMENTS THAT CATHOLICS DO NOT WORSHIP STATUES!  Ever. She just engages in "yes you do," "no we don't."   She has claimed to love Catholics, but apparently not to the point of having a serious dialogue or discussion with us. Because frankly folks, if she had to take us on in a fair forum, she would fail.











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