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I had wanted to make an epically large post on Daniel, Matthew 24, and Revelation. That is a huge undertaking and I have less time than I would like. So I think I'll be doing this in a series of installments. Unfortunately not as regularly as I would like. Anyway, here is my defense of the Catholic Church, based on Daniel chapter 2.
In the first dream of King Nebuchadnezzar there is a statue composed of four different materials. A head of gold, a chest and arms of silver, a belly and thighs of bronze, and finally legs and feet of iron and clay. According to the vision a stone will be hewn from the mountain without human hands and cast into the statue. This stone will smash into the clay feet and cause the statue to crumble. The small rock then becomes a great mountain and fills the earth.
Daniel told the king that he was the golden head. Next an inferior (silver) kingdom would follow his Babylonian Kingdom, then a third inferior (bronze) kingdom, and then a final (iron and clay) kingdom.
About the rock uncut by hands Daniel explained,
“And in the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall its sovereignty be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king and its interpretation is sure. (Daniel 2:44-45)
The stone hurled into the Fourth Kingdom signifies that “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed,” during/after the reign of the fourth kingdom.
From history we know the Kingdoms are:
1. The Babylonian Empire
2. The Medo-Persian Empire
3. The Greek Empire
4. The Roman Empire
It was during the reign of the Roman Empire that God established the Kingdom of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Christ, and by extension his body the Church, is the stone not cut by human hands. The kingdom of Christ was to expand like a great mountain, filling the whole earth. This can only be the Catholic Church. For which other Church has covered the whole earth? This kingdom cannot mean all churches together, professing a multitude of competiting doctrines, for the Lord says a Kingdom divided cannot stand. (Mark 3:24) It must be the Catholic Church.
No group of Christians other than the Catholic Church is united in doctrine, spread throughout the whole earth, nor can any others claim to trace their origins to the Church founded 2000 years ago. (except the schismatic Orthodox) The scripture says this Church will be a great mountain that will never be whittled down. Though people may apostasize and fall away, the Church will never need to be refounded, for unless the Lord build the house he labors in vain that builds it, and Christ has promised the gates of hell will never conquer His Church. All Protestant churches were founded by men, and we can name the dates they were founded. None can match the mountain of Daniel 2, which is the Catholic Church.
Now this is coming FTCCS…. 🙂 it’s on now.
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