Apocrypha: – Why Isn’t it in the Bible: Catholics will tell you, “You Protestants are missing part of the Bible. We have the rest of it.” This can throw people off, but it no longer has to. These false Catholic additions to the Bible are commonly called the Apocrypha or sometimes the Deuterocanonical books. The Apocrypha is a collection of uninspired, spurious books written by various individuals. The Catholic religion considers these books as scripture just like a Bible believer believes that our 66 books are the word of God, e.g. (Genesis to Revelation).

At the Council of Trent in 1546, the Roman Catholic religion pronounced the following apocryphal books sacred. (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, First and Second Maccabees, Additions to Ester and Daniel). They asserted that the apocryphal books together with unwritten tradition are of God and are to be received and venerated as the Word of God. So now you have the Bible, the Apocrypha, and Catholic Tradition as co-equal sources of truth for the Catholic.

In reality, the Bible is the last source of truth for Catholics. Catholic doctrine comes primarily from tradition stuck together with a few Bible names. In the reading of Catholic materials, you will find notes like this: “You have to keep the Bible in perspective.” Catholics do not believe that the Bible is God’s complete revelation for man. Go to www.jesus-is-lord.com/apocryph.htm for more on this subject.

 The Roman Catholic church, headquartered in Rome, Italy, has its own powerful City-State, the Vatican. The Roman Catholic church unofficially came into being in 312 A.D., at the time of the so-called "miraculous conversion" to Christianity of the Roman Emperor Constantine but he still worshipped the sun god. Although Christianity was not made the official religion of the Roman Empire until the edicts of Theodosius I in 380 and 381 A.D., Constantine, from 312 A.D. until his death in 337, was engaged in the process of simultaneously building pagan temples and Christian churches, and was slowly turning over the reins of his pagan priesthood to the Bishop of Rome. However, the family of Constantine did not give up the last vestige of his priesthood until after the disintegration of the Roman Empire – that being the title the emperors bore as heads of the pagan priesthood – Pontifex Maximus – a title which the popes would inherit. The popes also inherited Constantine's titles as the self-appointed civil head of the church – Summus Pontifex (Vicar of Christ and Bishop of Bishops).

Prior to the time of Constantine's "conversion," Christians were persecuted not so much for their profession of faith in Christ, but because they would not include pagan deities in their faith as well. Then, with Constantine's emphasis on making his new-found Christianity palatable to the heathen in the Empire, the "Christianization" of these pagan deities was facilitated. For example, pagan rituals and idols gradually took on Christian meanings and names and were incorporated into "Christian" worship (e.g., "saints" replaced the cult of pagan gods in both worship and as patrons of cities; mother/son statues were renamed Mary and Jesus; etc.), and pagan holidays were reclassified as Christian holy days (e.g., the Roman Lupercalia and the feast of purification of Isis became the Feast of the Nativity; the Saturnalia celebrations were replaced by Christmas celebrations; an ancient festival of the dead was replaced by All Souls Day, rededicated to Christian heroes [now Halloween]; etc.). A transition had occurred – instead of being persecuted for failure to worship pagan deities, Christians who did not agree with the particular orthodoxy backed by the Emperor were now persecuted in the name of Christ! "Christianized" Rome had become the legitimate successor of pagan Rome! This is the sad origin of the Roman Catholic Church as it compromised from the very beginning with paganism and in doing so became a cult serving the creature (Mary) more than the creator (Jesus).

Mary

The Mary in which Catholics worship is not the Mary of the Bible. Biblically, Mary was only human. God chose her to be a vessel to bring His beloved Son into the world. But Roman Catholics bow down to statues of Mary, exonerate and venerate her more than Christ Jesus.
In Exodus 20:4,5 God said, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them..." Mary would never be a part of this! She was not there when Christ created the universe. Christ was God long before she was ever born. Bowing to Mary is a sin!