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Phantasmic Post Mortem Miracles Count? Seriously Rome?

04/30/2014 49 Comments

pope-john-paul-iiPope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII were both made “saints” last Sunday in Rome. One of the requirements is to have performed two miracles which are verified and documented by official church investigators. However in these cases, it seems the standards have been dramatically relaxed. The so called miracles were not actually performed by the men but rather their ghosts.

According to news reports John Paul’s first miracle occured in 2005 shortly after his death. A nun, Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, prayed to the deceased pontiff soon after his death and then recovered from Parkinson’s disease.  Obviously a nun, like Simon-Pierre, devoted to John Paul II was predisposed to credit him for her healing no matter how it occurred.  It’s hardly convincing. His second “miracle” is similarly dubious. Floribeth Mora Diaz claimed the papal apparition appeared to her on the day he was beatified and healed her of an inoperable brain aneurysm. How it was verified that the papal phantasm accomplished either healing is not explained.

Pope Francis by passed the standard qualifications and approved John XXIII’s sainthood with only one so called miracle.  It also allegedly occurred after the Pope’s death.  An Italian nun, Sister Caterina Capitani, prayed to the pope in 1996, who had died three years earlier, and later recovered from a stomach tumor.  Of course, this is again less than impressive.

Such conditions go into remission all the time and there is simply no way to prove that the ghost of either pope is responsible.  Worse yet this is idolatrous sin of the worst kind. Prayer is an act of worship. Praying to deceased humans is idolatrous and necromantic. It is called an abomination in scripture (Deuteronomy 18:11).  In my new book The Supernatural Worldview, I explain in detail why it is not wise to attempt such ill-advised communication with dead, despite the anti-biblical proclamations of Rome.

Filed Under Apologetics Tagged With John Paul II, John XXIII, Pope, Romanism

Interview on Beyond Extraordinary

04/21/2014 10 Comments

Cris-Putnam-Interview-Supernatural-Worldview
This is the first interview spent entirely on the material in the new book The Supernatural Worldview. It came to two hours and we barely scratched the surface,

Beyond Extraordinary Ep. 19: The Supernatural Worldview with

Cris Putnam

Filed Under Interview

Consolmagno is Talking About Baptizing Aliens Again

04/15/2014 61 Comments

Just as the dust is settling from the Vatican’s latest astrobiology conference in Arizona, heralded as “The Search Exo-Vaticanafor Life Beyond the Solar System: Exoplanets, Biosignature & Instruments,” Jesuit astronomer Guy Consolmagno is out in public talking about baptizing extraterrestrials again. In fact, over the years quite a few Jesuit members of the Vatican Observatory Research Group (VORG) have made public statements concerning the baptism of extraterrestrials. The first was back in 1993 when then-acting VORG director George Coyne announced at the launch of the VATT facility that “the Church would be obliged to address the question of whether extraterrestrials might be brought within the fold and baptized.”[1] In a New York Times magazine article—titled “Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?”—another VORG astronomer, Chris Corbally, indicated he would baptize extraterrestrials as well.[2] Similarly, back in 2010 when asked whether he’d baptize an alien, Guy Consolmagno replied, “Only if they asked” and then qualified, “Any entity—no matter how many tentacles it has, has a soul.”[3] Now Consolmagno is taking his intergalactic evangelism aspirations to the halls of academia delivering a lecture called “Would you baptize an Extra-Terrestrial?” at Leeds Trinity University in the UK. Here is a recent article announcing the upcoming lecture:

Would you baptise an alien?

That is the unusual question posed to students in Leeds by one of the Pope’s astronomers. Scientifictheories and religion look set to collide in a talk by leading papal astronomer Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ. The acclaimed astronomer and Jesuit will share why astronomical research is so important to the Vatican.Brother Guy is based at the Vatican Observatory headquarters in Castel Gandolfo and he curates the Vatican meteorite collection, which is believed to be one of the largest in the world. He will deliver a lecture called “Would you baptize an Extra-Terrestrial?” at Leeds Trinity University, which is based in Horsforth.

Read more at The Yorkshire Evening Post

The Catholic belief is that baptism “confers grace ex opere operato, that is, the sacrament works of itself.”[4] This literally means the ritual itself takes away sin without requiring faith in the Gospel. This is also why unbaptized infants cannot go to heaven, according to Rome.[5] While the dissonance with Vatican II style inclusivism is deafening, theological harmony is not a strong suit for Rome. The Council of Trent declared: “If anyone denies that by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is conferred in baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted, or even asserts that the whole of that which has the true and proper nature of sin is not taken away, but says that it is only touched in person or is not imputed, let him be anathema.”[6] While that curses just about all evangelicals, biblically based doctrine recognizes baptism as an outward sign of what has already occurred in the heart of the believer (Mark 16:16). When you recognize that you are dead in your sins and believe that Christ died for you and rose from the dead, you are justified in God’s eyes (Romans 10:10). It is a heart condition in reference to the propositional content of the Gospel (1 Corinthians 15:3–5). False baptisms and conversions are commonplace. Baptism does not save anyone or remove sin. Nevertheless, the Catholic priest erroneously believes the sacrament itself has supernatural power to remove sin and consequently, could be deceived into thinking a baptized alien entity would be in a state of grace as well. Even if these viral media statements about the baptism of aliens seem tongue in cheek, it could be part of a more subtle effort to influence public opinion. If a deceptive entity were to pose as an ET, Rome would likely be taken in.

If you would like a signed copy of Exo-Vaticana from me personally order here.
In LA Mazulli’s Watchers 7 I discuss Rome’s ET connection along wwith some surprising revelations concerning the Pope’s ET connection by UFOlogist Jaime Maussan. If you would like a Watchers 7 DVD order here.

[1] Bruce Johnston , “Vatican Sets Evangelical Sights on Outer Space,” Daily Telegraph (London, England, Oct. 28, 1992), 15.

[2]Jack Hitt, “Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?” New York Times magazine, last accessed January 19, 2013,http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/29/magazine/would-you-baptize-an-extraterrestrial.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.

 [3] Richard Alleyne, “Pope Benedict XVI’s Astronomer: The Catholic Church Welcomes Aliens,” The Telegraph, last accessed January 19, 2013, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/the-pope/8009299/Pope-Benedict-XVIs-astronomer-the-Catholic-Church-welcomes-aliens.html.

[4] Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology., 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1998), 1100.

[5] “It (The Roman Church) teaches…that the souls…of those who die in mortal sin, or with only original sin descend immediately into hell; however, to be punished with different penalties and in different places.” Henry Denzinger, Roy J. Deferrari, and Karl Rahner, The Sources of Catholic Dogma (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1954), 193. The Council of Trent declared: “If anyone denies that by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ which is conferred in Baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted; or even assert that the whole of that which has the true and proper nature of sin is not taken way…let him be anathema.” Henry Denzinger, Sources of Catholic Dogma, 247). Thus, without baptism, original sin is not remitted and according to the above infants would descend immediately into hell. Older Catholic theologians speculated about a place called “limbo,” which was less severe than hell.

 [6]Henry Denzinger, Roy J. Deferrari, and Karl Rahner, The Sources of Catholic Dogma (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1954), 247.

Filed Under Exo Vaticana Tagged With Baptism, ET, VORG

New Supernatural Worldview Website

04/15/2014 1 Comment

Supernatural_Worldview BOOKMy new book The Supernatural Worldview to be released in May has a website http://www.supernaturalworldview.com/.  I will be posting excerpts from the book as well as blogging on subjects and news articles relevant to the topics in the book. The book focuses on worldview apologetics for what I call the paranormal paradigm shift, an idea I explained here.  Within you will find unconventional apologetics for the Christian faith by the way of defeaters for naturalism.  These include: 1) the evidence for extrasensory perception, also called psi—a controversial area for Christian apologetics; 2) the near-death experience, which implies that consciousness survives bodily death; and 3) the evidence for spirits and apparitions, whether of human or nonhuman origin. While any one of these serves as a defeater for naturalism, the biblical worldview can account for all of the above.

Filed Under Apologetics Tagged With paranormal

C.E.B. Cranfield on the Inconsistency of Replacement Theology

04/13/2014 16 Comments

by Cris Putnam

C.E.B. Cranfield is a renowned New Testament scholar and author of several commentaries, including Romans in the prestigious International Critical Commentary series. He is a Cambridge educated emeritus professor of theology at University of Durham in England. He is reformed in his theology. His commentary on Romans is considered one of the very best by scholars of all stripes. From careful exegesis of Romans 9-11 he confidently casts supercessionism (replacement theology) as an unfortunate twisting of Pauline theology. One comment in particular should put a stone in the shoe of the replacement theologian:Cranfield

It is only where the Church persists in refusing to learn this message, where it secretly—perhaps quite unconsciously! —believes that its own existence is based on human achievement, and so fails to understand God’s mercy to itself, that it is unable to believe in God’s mercy for still unbelieving Israel, and so entertains the ugly and unscriptural notion that God has cast off His people Israel and simply replaced it by the Christian Church. These three chapters [Romans 9-11] emphatically forbid us to speak of the Church as having once and for all taken the place of the Jewish people.[1]

Cranfield is most certainly correct. I really do not know how Paul could have spelled it out any clearer than this: “As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”(Romans 11:28–29)

 

[1]C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (London; New York: T&T Clark International, 2004), 448.

Filed Under Apologetics