The Seed of God vs. the System of Trent
- Michelle Hayman
- Sep 11
- 19 min read
What came first—God, or the Council of Trent?
If God revealed His gospel once for all through the apostles, then it follows that what they preached and wrote was not their own invention but the very words of God. As Peter testifies, “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Pet 1:21). Paul declares that “all scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Tim 3:16), and he insists that the gospel he preached was “not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:11–12). Christ Himself promised the apostles, “the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost… shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26), and again, “when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13). This is why Paul says the mystery of the gospel “is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Eph 3:5). The very foundation of the Church is “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone” (Eph 2:20).
That means the gospel is fixed, complete, and delivered “once for all unto the saints” (Jude 3). The Spirit who spoke through the apostles has already borne His testimony. He does not contradict Himself, for “God is not a man, that he should lie” (Num 23:19), nor does He change His mind (Mal 3:6; Jas 1:17). If the Roman Church now claims that the same Spirit inspires her, then by necessity her doctrine must align with what the Spirit already spoke through the apostles. But it does not. Trent anathematizes justification by faith alone. It denies that justification is by the sole imputation of Christ’s righteousness apart from inherent grace and charity; it makes righteousness something to be “preserved and increased through good works”; it declares that justification is lost by mortal sin and cannot be recovered except by the sacrament of penance; it insists that temporal punishments remain even after forgiveness. Yet the Scriptures given by the Holy Spirit say the opposite: that believers are a new creation (2 Cor 5:17), sealed with the Spirit until the day of redemption (Eph 1:13–14), that sin will not have dominion over them (Rom 6:14), and that the seed of God abides in them (1 John 3:9).
So the question must be asked plainly: if the Holy Spirit of God gave us Scripture by speaking through the apostles, what spirit is it that speaks through Rome when it contradicts the very words He gave? It cannot be the same Spirit, for He does not deny Himself. And if it is not the Spirit of Christ, then the only logical conclusion is that it is another spirit altogether.
This question strikes at the core of Rome’s claim to “apostolic succession,” for if the Roman communion does not actually preserve the apostles’ gospel, then its claim of succession; never historically verified; amounts to nothing more than an institutional boast without doctrinal substance.
At the Council of Trent in 1547, Rome codified its doctrine of justification. Session VI teaches that justification is infused righteousness, not the sole imputed righteousness of Christ; that this justification must be preserved and even increased by works; that mortal sin destroys it; and that it can only be restored through the sacrament of penance, comprised of contrition, confession, and satisfaction. It further teaches that temporal punishments remain even after forgiveness, to be worked off in this life or in purgatory. Session XIV expands the point: penance is necessary unto salvation for those who fall after baptism (Chapter II); the form of the sacrament is the priest’s judicial “I absolve you,” with the parts being contrition, confession, and satisfaction (Chapter III); priests act as judges and mortal sins must be enumerated to them (Chapter V); absolution requires jurisdiction and some cases are “reserved” to higher authorities (Chapter VII); satisfactions are imposed because punishments remain (Chapter VIII). These are not incidental footnotes; they are the backbone of Trent’s soteriology.
Scripture however, speaks with far greater clarity and finality. The apostolic teaching is that justification is God’s decisive act of declaring a sinner righteous by faith in Christ, on the basis of Christ’s righteousness imputed to the believer—“the gift of righteousness” received “by one, Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:17) so that the Christian is “found in him, not having mine own righteousness… but that which is through the faith of Christ” (Phil 3:9, KJB). This state is not fragile or reversible, but the permanent condition of those indwelt by the Spirit. John writes: “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he is born of God” (1 John 3:9). Paul echoes: “Sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (Rom 6:14). “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Cor 5:17, KJB). Believers are “sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession” (Eph 1:13–14, KJB). Though Christians stumble (1 John 1:8–9), the dominion of sin is broken; the Spirit indwells (Rom 8:9–11), produces holiness, and keeps God’s people to the end (Jude 24), so that life in Christ is truly “no condemnation” and “walking… after the Spirit” (Rom 8:1–17).
Rome’s framework collides directly with this apostolic witness. If the righteousness by which we stand is God’s own gift in Christ and the indwelling Spirit (Rom 5:17; Phil 3:9), how is it “increased” by human penance? You cannot top up the righteousness of God. If a single mortal sin destroys justification, then the Spirit’s seal is functionally revocable. Yet Scripture teaches that those in Christ are sealed unto the day of redemption (Eph 1:13–14), and that God is able to keep His people from falling (Jude 24). Trent renders the Spirit fragile; the apostles present Him as decisive. This is not a minor divergence; it is a different gospel.
The hinge of Rome’s distortion is linguistic and theological. The apostles preached metanoia; repentance. In the LXX/NT Greek, metanoia and metanoeite always mean repentance: a Spirit-wrought change of mind and heart that turns from sin to God. John the Baptist, Jesus, and the apostles proclaim, “Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt 3:2, KJB); “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins” (Acts 2:38, KJB); “God… now commandeth all men every where to repent” (Acts 17:30, KJB); “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3:19, KJB). Luke even describes salvation itself as “repentance unto life” (Acts 11:18). But Jerome’s Latin Vulgate mistranslated metanoeite as poenitentiam agite; “do penance.” Hence the Vulgate reads “Poenitentiam agite” in Matthew 3:2 and Acts 2:38. From this mistranslation the medieval penitential system grew: contrition, confession to a priest, satisfactions imposed by authority, then indulgences and purgatorial satisfactions. In the Greek of the LXX/NT, however, metanoia never means “do penance.” The KJB faithfully renders the term “repent.” Even classic Protestant editions flagged the issue explicitly at Acts 2:38: “Do penance (poenitentiam agite) is the Roman translation of metanoēsate.” The apostles called for broken hearts turned to God; Rome substituted a ritual treadmill.
Christ Himself exposed the futility of trying to contain the Spirit within old, man-made frameworks. “No man putteth new wine into old bottles [wineskins]; else the new wine doth burst the bottles… but new wine must be put into new bottles” (Mark 2:22, KJB). The point is unmistakable: the Holy Spirit; the “new wine”; cannot indwell the old, unrepentant self. The wineskin must be made new; the old must repent, be made a new creature, and then the Spirit purifies and fills. Rome, by teaching penance instead of repentance, attempts to repair and patch the old wineskin with rituals, rather than allowing God to make new vessels fit for His Spirit. What, then, is the point of Christ’s parable if the Roman system can supposedly mend the old skin by satisfactions? Does this not empty His words of meaning and place their sacramental scheme above Christ’s own teaching?
Peter; the very one Rome names as its first pope; confirms the same truth. He explains that the trials of believers are designed to purify “the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire,” so that it “might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 1:7, KJB). It is faith purified by God’s fire, not satisfactions demanded by priests, that proves genuine life. The Spirit purifies; Christ’s blood cleanses. Rome exalts penance yet ignores the doctrine taught by the apostle they claim as their foundation. The irony is glaring.
If a sinner truly repents, the Holy Spirit indwells and purifies that person. “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him” (1 John 3:9). “Sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (Rom 6:14). The indwelt believer is “sealed… until the day of redemption” (Eph 1:13–14). The Spirit is not a fluctuating presence who increases and decreases like a bank balance controlled by human satisfactions. He is the earnest; the inviolable pledge; of our inheritance. How then can the Spirit “increase” or “decrease”? How can anyone add to the righteousness of perfection? Christ’s righteousness is not a substance administered in installments; it is the perfect righteousness of God credited to believers by faith (Rom 5:17; Phil 3:9). To claim that penance “tops up” righteousness is to say the righteousness of God Himself is insufficient. That is why Paul brands such teaching “another gospel” (Gal 1:6–9).
This also exposes the deeper tragedy: those trained to “do penance” instead of to repent toward God are not meeting the apostolic condition for the Spirit’s indwelling. The Spirit indwells the repentant; those who turn to God Himself, against whom they have sinned. The apostles never commanded sinners to enumerate their sins to a man in a booth; himself a sinner whose heart no one sees but God. They proclaimed repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21), direct confession to God with cleansing on the ground of Christ’s blood (1 John 1:9), and comfort in the fact that “we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). Rome replaces repentance with penance, advocates with human judges, cleansing with satisfactions, and the Spirit’s unbreakable seal with a revolving door of grace lost and regained.
The apostolic pattern is breathtakingly simple and gloriously God-centered. When Christians sin, they confess their sins to God, and “he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9, KJB). Christ Himself; not a diocesan tribuna; is our Advocate with the Father (1 John 2:1). The Spirit leads us in ongoing repentance, not cycles of sacramental re-justification. “By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Heb 10:14, KJB). “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7, KJB). “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1, KJB). Conversely, Trent’s system perpetually reintroduces condemnation: justification infused, lost by mortal sin, restored only by penance, increased by works, temporal punishments still remaining, absolution tethered to clerical jurisdiction. Its very architecture; necessary penance after baptism (XIV, II), judicial absolution by priests (XIV, III), sins enumerated before judges (XIV, V), jurisdictional dependence and reserved cases (XIV, VII), satisfactions because punishments remain (XIV, VIII); keeps souls tied to the institution rather than to God. But the apostolic summons is the opposite: “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace” (Heb 4:16, KJB). New wine demands new wineskins (Mark 2:22), the new covenant reality promised in Jeremiah 31 and fulfilled in Hebrews 10; not a return to courts, penalties, and satisfactions.
Even the word “church” shatters Rome’s pretensions. In Greek, ekklesia means “assembly” or “called-out ones.” The church in the New Testament is the body of Christ composed of all believers united to Him (Eph 1:22–23), not a juridical institution that rations grace through a priestly bureaucracy. By redefining ekklesia into an institutional court of sacramental dependencies, Rome inverted the apostolic vision. They did not even get the definition right.
Finally, the boast of “apostolic succession” evaporates the moment the apostolic teaching is displaced. Rome’s catechism says succession exists so that the “full and living Gospel” might always be preserved (CCC §77). But succession has meaning only if the gospel is preserved. Paul commands Timothy to guard the apostolic message and entrust it to faithful men (2 Tim 2:2). He declares that if anyone, even an angel from heaven, preaches another gospel, let him be accursed (Gal 1:6–9). When a man-made institution codifies doctrines the apostles never taught; faith-plus-works justification, reversible justification, penance-as-restoration, juridical absolution, remaining temporal punishments; it has forfeited any credible claim to apostolicity. Succession without doctrinal fidelity is not apostolic succession at all. It is continuity of office without continuity of gospel.
Therefore the conclusion is inescapable. Scripture proclaims that God’s seed abides in the believer (1 John 3:9); that sin’s dominion is broken (Rom 6:14); that believers are sealed by the Spirit until the day of redemption (Eph 1:13–14); that when we sin we confess to God and are cleansed because Christ is our Advocate (1 John 1:9; 1 John 2:1); that justification is secured in Christ’s perfect righteousness, once for all (Heb 10:14; 1 John 1:7; Rom 8:1). Trent, by contrast, teaches an infused justification that must be increased and preserved by works (Canon 24), that is destroyed by mortal sin (Canon 27), and restored only by penance; contrition, confession, satisfaction (Canon 29); with temporal punishments still remaining (Canon 30), all administered in a judicial framework defined in Session XIV (Chs. II, III, V, VII, VIII). These two systems are not compatible. Trent’s scheme is not the apostolic gospel; it is another gospel. And a communion that codifies such a scheme cannot plausibly claim apostolic succession in the sense the apostles themselves required; faithful preservation of their teaching.
The true ekklesia (church) is not an earthly, political-religious intitution but the Spirit-constituted body of all who are united to Christ. By meaning and usage, ekklesia is an “assembly” of the called-out ones; never a bricks-and-mortar system, nor a monopoly over grace. In the LXX it renders Israel’s gathered qahal, and in the New Testament it names both local assemblies and the one body of Christ (Acts 19 shows the word simply means “assembly”; Eph 1:22–23; Col 1:18). The ontological center of the church, then, is not an external hierarchy but the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in those who have repented and believed. Scripture locates God’s dwelling now in His people: “ye are the temple of God, and…the Spirit of God dwelleth in you” (1 Cor 3:16; cf. 6:19); believers are “built together for an habitation of God through the Spirit” (Eph 2:21–22), “a spiritual house, an holy priesthood” (1 Pet 2:5, 9). Because the ekklesia is constituted by indwelling, access to God is immediate and universal to all who are in Christ: “having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus… let us draw near” (Heb 10:19–22; cf. 4:16). There is “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5). The gifts and ministries are distributed to the whole body, “to every man… the manifestation of the Spirit” (1 Cor 12:7), and even overseers are warned not to “lord it over” the flock (1 Pet 5:3). Offices serve the organism; they do not replace it.
From these premises the logic is unavoidable. If the ekklesia is the temple-people in whom the Spirit dwells, then no external institution can claim to be the church in such a way that it rations the Spirit’s grace or places tolls upon access to God. The indwelling Spirit is given at repentance and faith, sealing believers “until the day of redemption” (Eph 1:13–14); the dominion of sin is broken because “God’s seed abideth in him” (1 John 3:9) and “sin shall not have dominion over you” (Rom 6:14). Therefore the essence of the church is spiritual union, not clerical jurisdiction. To bind forgiveness to a judicial booth, to condition restoration on satisfactions, or to locate the fountain of grace within institutional control is to deny what Christ and His apostles declare about the church’s being and the Spirit’s gift. This is why the apostolic witness condemns the commercialization of holy things: Isaiah’s cry, “buy… without money and without price” (Isa 55:1), and Christ’s “freely ye have received, freely give” (Matt 10:8), stand against any economy that monetizes mercy. Peter’s rebuke to Simon; “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money” (Acts 8:20); and Paul’s refusal to be a “peddler” of the word (2 Cor 2:17) expose the same error, as does his warning that false teachers “through covetousness… shall with feigned words make merchandise of you” (2 Pet 2:3). The prophets condemned shepherds who fed themselves rather than the flock (Ezek 34), and Christ promised worship “in spirit and in truth,” not bound to earthly loci of control (John 4:21–24; Acts 7:48).
Put as a simple chain: the church is the body indwelt by the Spirit; the Spirit is given at repentance and faith and seals the believer; therefore the church cannot be identical with, or subordinated to, a man-made system that dispenses grace by installments, sells satisfactions, or withholds reconciliation except on institutional terms. To do so is to turn the bride into a marketplace and the saints into merchandise, precisely what the apostles denounce. The true ekklesia is the body of all believers indwelt by the Spirit; an organism animated by Christ its Head (Eph 1:22–23; Col 1:18); not a Roman institution that claims proprietary rights over the gospel’s free grace.
So we return to the question with which we began: what came first; God, or the Council of Trent? The answer is obvious. God’s gospel stands eternal, while Trent’s decrees; no matter how loudly defended; remain the inventions of proud men.
The False Claim of Rome to Be the Sole Church of Christ
Rome’s authority claim hangs on a single premise: that it is the Church Christ founded, a visible society under bishops with the pope as head, possessing exclusive magisterial authority to interpret Scripture and Tradition. Vatican II states it plainly: “This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him.” The Catechism builds on the same foundation: the apostles left bishops as their successors with their teaching authority, and the “authentic interpretation of the Word of God…has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone.” Vatican I then defined papal infallibility, binding consciences to the decrees of one office. But this entire edifice depends on what “church” is.
The New Testament word is ekklesia, which by meaning and usage denotes an assembly or congregation of people, not a juridical corporation rationing grace. The same word describes secular assemblies in Acts 19. The apostles then fill it with covenant meaning: the ekklesia is the body of Christ, composed of all believers indwelt by the Spirit (Eph 1:22–23; 2:21–22; 1 Cor 3:16; 12:12–27). Its essence is union with Christ and the Spirit’s indwelling, not subjection to a monarchic see. “There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5). All believers are “a royal priesthood” (1 Pet 2:9). Peter himself forbids shepherds to “lord it over” the flock (1 Pet 5:3), echoing Christ’s command that authority in His kingdom is service, not domination (Mark 10:42–45).
The apostolic storyline confirms this. Paul records that Peter’s primary commission was to the Jews while his own was to the Gentiles (Gal 2:7–9). Before any church in Rome, the Gospel flourished in Antioch, where “the disciples were first called Christians” (Acts 11:26). Early tradition states that Peter ministered there and was succeeded by Evodius, with Ignatius following him. Meanwhile, Acts records that visitors from Rome were present at Pentecost when Peter preached (Acts 2:10), making it likely that the Gospel reached Rome early through these hearers. Irenaeus, a century later, does say that Peter and Paul together established and organized the church at Rome; but this is a claim about apostles founding a local church, not Christ creating a papal monarchy over the universal ekklesia.
Rome’s counter-claim is that Christ “constituted the Church as a visible society and spiritual community” under bishops with the pope as head. But visibility does not mean monopoly. The ekklesia is visible wherever believers gather around the Word of God and the ordinances Christ instituted; baptism and the Lord’s Supper; under the care of faithful shepherds. Its unity is spiritual, born of the one Spirit and the one Gospel, not of a chancery in Rome. New Testament offices exist to serve the body, never to replace it. Oversight is pastoral, not imperial; it is service, not monarchy. Rome’s claim to be the sole authentic interpreter of Scripture is nothing less than a denial of the Spirit Himself, who distributes gifts across the whole body (1 Cor 12:7) and equips all believers for the knowledge of the truth. To concentrate that authority in one throne is to silence the Spirit and exalt man in His place.
Even Rome’s own history betrays how artificial these claims are. The Donation of Constantine, once used to justify sweeping papal temporal authority, was an eighth-century forgery, exposed by Lorenzo Valla in the fifteenth century. The Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, a ninth-century forgery, bolstered papal supremacy still further. The triple tiara, used for papal coronations until the 1960s, symbolized threefold lordship over heaven, earth, and purgatory. Ceremonies of ring-kissing and even foot-kissing reinforced an imperial court ethos utterly foreign to apostolic ministry. None of this resembles the humble ekklesia Christ founded; it resembles worldly monarchy baptized with Christian language.
Rome’s teaching heightens the contradiction. The Catechism candidly admits that Sunday observance “replaces” the Sabbath, and that it follows Augustine’s numbering of the Ten Commandments rather than the Jewish or Reformed enumeration. Yet Rome dares to claim it alone safeguards apostolic tradition, even while it alters worship, rearranges God’s commandments, and forgets that Christ—whom it pretends to serve—was Himself a Jew crucified under Roman power.
Vatican I asserts that papal definitions are irreformable because the Church cannot err, but the office of pope itself never appears in Scripture. How can an office not given by Christ be clothed with infallibility? Worse still, how can it add dogmas to the Gospel when the apostles explicitly forbid addition (Gal 1:6–9; Rev 22:18)?
The logic cannot be avoided. The apostles preached and wrote as moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet 1:21; 2 Tim 3:16; John 14:26; 16:13; Eph 3:5). That is how we have the New Testament. The Church is “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets” (Eph 2:20), a foundation laid once (1 Cor 3:11). Therefore the content of the Gospel and the nature of the Church are fixed by the Spirit’s testimony through them. If Rome claims the same Spirit, it must teach the same message. But it does not. By turning metanoia (repentance) into poenitentiam agite (do penance), by making justification a substance to be infused and topped up by works, by declaring it lost through mortal sin and restored only through penance, and by tying forgiveness to a judicial booth under human judges, Rome speaks doctrines the Spirit never gave. If the Spirit spoke once through the apostles, then a different spirit speaks in Trent and in Rome’s Magisterium.
Thus Rome cannot be “the sole Church of Christ.” The true ekklesia is the assembly of all believers indwelt by the Spirit, locally gathered in worship and globally united to Christ the Head. Its visibility is the light of holiness, not the pomp of tiaras. Its authority is the Word of God, not the decrees of men. Rome is not the church Christ founded; Rome is the empire that crucified Him, baptized into a false form through forged documents, imperial politics, and a hierarchy that lords it over the flock.
But consider the words of Peter—the very man Rome audaciously enthrones as its first ‘pope.’
Peter Against the Papacy: The Throne That Never Was
If Rome’s claim rests on Peter, then Peter himself is the witness who dismantles it. The irony is staggering. Rome has constructed a throne for Peter that he never sat upon, invested it with powers he never claimed, and adorned it with honors he explicitly rejected. The papal office is not Peter’s legacy, but Peter’s contradiction.
In his epistles, Peter gives us the blueprint of church life. To the scattered believers he writes: “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people” (1 Pet 2:9). No clerical caste mediates grace, for every believer is clothed in priestly access to God through Christ. The tearing of the temple veil (Matt 27:51) was not symbolic theater; it was the proclamation that in Christ, the whole people of God has direct entrance into the holy place (Heb 10:19–22). To claim a single bishop as the sole vicar of Christ is to stitch the veil back up again, denying the priesthood of the saints and enthroning a man in Christ’s place.
When Peter exhorts elders, his words leave no room for hierarchy: “Feed the flock of God which is among you… neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being ensamples to the flock” (1 Pet 5:2–3). Authority is service, not domination. He directs their eyes past himself to the true center: “And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away” (1 Pet 5:4). The Chief Shepherd is Christ; elders are under-shepherds, never monarchs. And when Cornelius knelt before Peter, Peter rebuked him: “Stand up; I myself also am a man” (Acts 10:26). Peter refused the homage that his so-called successors now demand as a matter of custom.
The papacy, however, exalted itself far beyond Peter’s words. For centuries popes wore the triple tiara, symbolizing rule over heaven, earth, and purgatory, purgatory itself is never mentioned in the gospel. They received ring-kissing and even foot-kissing as tokens of their sovereignty. These external symbols have been downplayed in recent decades to craft an air of humility, but the throne itself remains — a throne not found in Scripture, not instituted by Christ, and not authorized by the apostles. The pomp may be toned down, but the claim is the same: absolute jurisdiction over Christ’s Church.
This throne did not emerge from the upper room at Pentecost; it emerged from the ruins of empire. The same city that crucified Christ became the seat of a hybrid political-religious monarchy. When the emperors fell, bishops filled the void, cloaking imperial dominance in ecclesiastical robes. To secure their claims, they leaned not on Scripture but on frauds. The Donation of Constantine, a forgery of the eighth century, conveniently “proved” that Constantine handed vast territories and authority to the pope. The Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, another set of forgeries from the ninth century, fabricated papal prerogatives to centralize power. Both were eventually unmasked, but not before they reshaped Christendom and gave the papacy a counterfeit pedigree. Lies enthroned the pope, not apostolic succession.
This is why the papal office cannot be excused as a mere “development.” It is not the Spirit’s organic growth but the empire’s political mutation. The Roman pontiff still sits in the heart of the empire, heir not to Peter’s fisherman’s net but to Caesar’s scepter. Rome claims to be the Church Christ founded, yet it functions as the empire that crucified Him: political, hierarchical, commanding obedience through power rather than persuasion, and binding consciences to decrees that Christ and His apostles never gave.
How can a pope claim infallibility when the very office he occupies was born of fraud and ambition? How can he demand obedience when his predecessors erased the Sabbath, renumbered God’s commandments, and added dogmas forbidden by the apostles’ warning not to add to the gospel (Gal 1:6–9; Rev 22:18)? How can he style himself the “servant of the servants of God” while presiding from a throne that Christ never built? The tiara may be set aside, the feet no longer kissed, but the throne remains; and it is a throne erected on lies, not on the Word of God.
Peter himself would never sit upon it. He told us what the Church is: a body of priests indwelt by the Spirit, shepherded by Christ, served by humble elders, and standing as a people called out of darkness into God’s marvelous light (1 Pet 2:9). Rome may claim Peter, but Peter denies Rome.
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