Tradition

It’s amazing how, when placed against the light of Jewish practices, the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and even the Apostles as recorded in Scripture can oftentimes leap out and give us a new understanding. Case in point: remember when you first understood how the Passover (Pesach) is a foreshadow of how Christ Jesus will be the Passover Lamb whose blood will be shed so that God’s wrath will pass over those who believe on Him, it felt like a revelation, didn’t it?

I’ve been reading a few interesting articles on the Jewish betrothal, and it was amazing how I was seeing some teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ in a wonderful, new light!

Before a Jewish marriage is completed, there’s the betrothal which, in Jesus’ time, was essentially a marriage covenant where the bridegroom would take the initiative to travel from his father’s house to the home of the prospective bride and negotiate with the bride’s father a price that he’ll need to pay for his bride.

Once a price was agreed upon and when the bridegroom has fully paid the price, a marriage covenant was established. By this time, the man and woman were regarded as husband and wife, but had to live apart for yet a season. The woman would be declared to be set apart, or sanctified, for her groom from then on. The couple will also drink from a common cup of wine over which the betrothal benediction had been pronounced to signify the covenant.

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Sometimes it makes me wonder why many who subscribe to Sola Scriptura themselves make so much of man-made tradition and even defend it rather than trusting on the Word of God as the final authority. After all, that’s what Sola Scriptura means, doesn’t it?

Case in point: yesterday I heard a podcast of the Way of the Master Radio (July 29, Hour 1) where a listener called up to ask why we still celebrate Good Friday and Easter when it was apparent from Scripture that Jesus was to resurrect three days and three nights after His death on the tree.

Todd Friel defended the position and even tried saying that, well, the Jewish had different ways of telling time from us. I can’t really remember what else he said, because I was going “no, no, no!” by then!

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To many who are not well acquainted with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, it might seem that I am nitpicking on non-essential issues and intentionally picking a fight with Roman Catholics.

I assure you that my issue is not with Roman Catholics per se, but with the institution that has installed herself as the “one true Church of Christ” that has, among other things, perverted the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ so that she can have a stranglehold on believers and twisted Scripture such that doctrines not taught in the Bible have become a snare to those truly desiring to seek God.

Many Roman Catholics are nice people (I hesitate to say ‘good’ but no one is ‘good’ according to Scripture), and some of them do earnestly seek God from what I know. It therefore pains me that they are trapped by a man-made institution and her un-Biblical laws when God’s Truth has set us free.

In the minds of many, Roman Catholicism has become synonymous with Christianity, primarily because the most visible displays of Christianity have been linked to the Vatican, e.g. in movies, you usually see a Roman Catholic priest called in to perform exorcism or marry a couple, but seldom a Protestant minister.

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Surely, this is not the “true Church of God” as they proclaim themselves to be! If you’re Roman Catholic, I encourage you to read this and see for yourself how far removed from the true teachings of God these traditions of men are! Refutations to these man-made traditions follow immediately after each event, and are taken directly from Scripture.

300 A.D.: Practice of praying for the dead and “signing with the cross” introduced.

375 A.D.: Veneration of dead people and use of statues and images as part of worship introduced.

500 A.D.: Doctrine of purgatory first preached by the Roman Catholic Church.

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