We'll be briefly examining the following topics:

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Mary, the mother of Jesus, is only mentioned in our Bible in the Gospels and in the Book of Acts (Acts 1.14) in historical perspective. The few times that she is mentioned she is always mentioned with the qualifier, "the mother of Jesus", appended to her name. Catholics believe that because she possessed the exalted office of "Mother of Jesus" that she must surely possess some special reign in Heaven, that she must surely be the Queen of Heaven. Some Catholics even pray to her, or to an icon representing her, in the belief that if she asks Jesus to do it, then He surely will, because she was His mother. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

First, if Mary were the Queen of Heaven, I would think that the Lord would have said more about her in the scriptures. Jesus rarely recognized His mother once He was "about His Father's business". No New Testament Author wrote about her (other than in historical perspective), nor suggested that she was the Queen of Heaven. If fact, Queen of Heaven is a term entirely fabricated by Catholicism as applied to Mary. The term, where found in Scripture, is always used when applied to a pagan diety (see Jeremiah 7.18; 44.17-19, 25. These are the only instances of this term in Scripture).

Second, the few times we see Jesus interacting with His mother, we see that His Father's Plan is always first and foremost in His mind:

John 2.1-4 "And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there: And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage. And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come."

At the marriage in Cana Mary asked her Son to replenish their wine stock. Though Jesus did as she asked He still mildly rebuked her for asking Him to do something out of the time-frame of the Plan of God. As He hung dying on the Cross Jesus made His relationship with His mother plain:

John 19:26 "When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son!"

Jesus knew that He was entering a higher level in the Plan of God, a level where He would no longer enjoy the Mother-Son relationship with Mary. In Heaven the earthly bonds are broken (Matthew 22.30; Mark 12.25; Luke 20.34-35), even the bonds of holy matrimony. Mary would have no special "queenship" in Heaven.

Third, Jesus made it very plain that we should only pray to the Father:

Matthew 6:9 "After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name."

Luke 11:2 "And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth."

Prayer to an icon, or to a self imagined image of Mary is useless and blasphemous. We should pray only to the Father, in the name of the Son, and in the Power of the Holy Spirit. I am sure that there are many good Christians within the Catholic Church, but on the doctrine of Mary they are definitely wading in heresy.

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When Satan was cast out of Heaven by Michael (under God's authority) he started to entrench himself on the earth. He learned from his past mistakes that the direct approach is not always the best, that it's sometimes better to sneak up on those you want to conquer rather than hitting them over the head with a board. So he developed a wonderful (to him) scheme that became the occultic, a scheme designed to trap men by using their own desires against them. All occultic devices and workers have one thing in common: they want to help you reach inner happiness without God and without God approved means.

Leviticus 20:6 "And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people."

Deuteronomy 18:9 "When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations."

Exodus 22:18 "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

Deuteronomy 18:10 "There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch."

God is not playing around when it concerns witchcraft and it's devices. All forms of occultism are an abomination to God. If you get involved in it's trap, even innocently, you can expect to lose your fellowship with Him while being placed under the most serious forms of Divine discipline. Satanism is like a drug, once you get a taste you want more and more. King Saul discovered this too late (1 Samuel 28.6-20), and eventually collapsed into madness and death. His kingdom and riches were taken away from him by God and given to David. You can lose everything you own if you get into the occultic.

See also The Dangers and Warnings against Astrology, where we do a more in-depth analysis of this subject. Remember to use the BACK button on your browser to return to this point.

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1. They cloak themselves as Christian, and even use Christian orthodox terminology (though what they mean when they use this terminology is not what the Church means).
2. They often offer supplemental inspired holy writings that supposedly complete the canon of Scripture.
3. They offer false prophecy or some form of false spiritual gift that you can get no where else.
4. They stroke your ego while promoting your participation in their movement.
5. They often demand extraordinary service in giving of time and money as proof of your conversion "into the faith".
6. They add to or take away from the plain teachings of the Word of God.
7. They teach that you cannot enter Heaven unless you belong to this group.

The Watchtower Observer, is written by an ex-Jehovah's Witness, and is certainly more informed about this group's false doctrine than I am. Other sites that point out Witness doctrinal error can be found here.

The Berean Christian Ministries examines the unique non-Christian teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also called the Mormons or LDS, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Mormonism Research Ministry is an evangelical Christian Ministry which has been challenging the claims of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 1979.

We also have several other cultic/ apologetic sites on our web-links page. As I discover more apologetic websites they will be listed on that constantly updated page. One final exhortation, though: when you meet a member of a cult, you are meeting an unsaved person. They are what the Bible calls "in the natural man" and cannot understand the things of God until they are saved:

1 Corinthians 2:14 "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."

When you talk to these people your foremost objective is not to prove that you are right and they are wrong, but to lead these misguided souls to Christ. Any refutation that you do against their "doctrines" should always have this goal in mind. God bless you in your endeavors!

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Is evolutionary theory provable? If you have an amazing degree of imagination then, yes, I suppose it is. Imagine taking bags of flour, salt, sugar, eggs and flavoring, and throwing it all at a wall so that it busts apart. Then imagine waiting for some by-chance force to mix it together and spontaneously heat it till it turns into a cake. If you can believe that this will ever happen you can believe in evolution.

Evolutionary thought is based on the premise that there is no God or Higher Creator, that all things came into existence out of chaos. If a thought springs out of a madman's mind we consider it to be baseless, empty, pure supposition. Yet evolutionists believe that the origin of all our minds was out of confusion and madness, and want you believe that this is logical. If we all came out of confusion then why would any of our thoughts or ideas be logical? Chaos only leads to chaos. To further their cause evolutionists developed certain "tests" that would prove their theories to be viable. Yet their tests have proven time and time again to be unstable and unreliable, no better than the theories they seek to prove.

The proofs against evolution are numerous, and only go to show how far man will drift to avoid His Creator:

• Evolutionary uninformed geologists date the earth at 4.5 billion years old. Based on what we know to be true, erosion caused by the sea would have destroyed all land mass above sea level in just 14 million years. In only 1 billion years all land mass would have been destroyed 70 times. Hence evolution disregards provable scientific fact.
• It is conservatively estimated that 14.3 million tons of dust from meteorites falls on the earth each year. Since the earth has a fully developed atmosphere the majority of this dust is burned up. The moon, on the other hand, has no atmosphere and yet receives about the same amount of dust. In 5 billion years the amount of dust that would have settled on the moon's surface would be 137 feet deep. It's interesting that in the 70's manned space flight Neil Armstrong's footprint only sunk 1/8 of an inch into dust when he walked on the moon. Summary: we have a very young earth and moon!
• One of the greatest evolutionary finds, Peking Man, was discovered in China by archaeologists and kept well guarded. Two French scientists were eventually allowed to examine the remains. After the examination they concluded that these were in reality animal bones. ["Science of Today and the Problem of Genesis", O'Connel, pages 108-136)
• Piltdown Man, another great evolutionary find, was no more than a prefabricated hoax. On closer examination the remains were the mis-matched jawbone of a modern ape and a fossilized human skull. ["Evolution and Christian Faith", Davidheiser, pages 340-349]
• Yet another "great discovery", Hesperopitheous Man, was built up from the tooth of an extinct pig.
• Evolutionist scientific dating methods are also flawed. Carbon-14, Potassium Argon, and other radiometric dating methods often return bizarre results. A living mollusk was tested using the Carbon-14 method and was conclusively proven to be dead for 3000 years. Lava rocks that were recovered from a volcano that erupted in 1801 were proven to be 3 billion years old with the Potassium Argon method. The rocks taken from the moon were also dated to be from 28 billion to 700 million years old. ["Science", volume 141, page 634, Kieth and Anderson]
• Evolutionary theory states that man did not walk on the earth when dinosaurs were alive. Yet in Paluxy, Texas, a fossilized human footprint was discovered next to the track of a dinosaur. ["Journal of Geophysical Research", Frankhouser and Naughton, volume 73, page 4601]

Don't be a fool! Accept the fact that there is a Creator God, and that He provided a Saviour for you (John 3.16). Accept Jesus as your Saviour today.