• Mar 10th, 2016 at 11:05 AM (CST)
• By PD
• Categories:

This coming Sunday is Palm Sunday, the commemoration of when Jesus rode into Jerusalem to accolades of the people, and to palm branches strewn on the ground as he rode a donkey to the city. The Palm branches and cloaks of the people formed a "red carpet" treatment for this King of KIngs, though the crowd had no clue how Jesus would earn that title, by sacrificing himself as a sin offering for our redemption!

We might call the next day "Palm Monday" or similar as Jesus proceeds to show his authority as our King by purging the Temple of the money changers and sellers of animlas to pilgrims arriving for the Feast of Unleavened Bread. He called them thieves, and excoriated them for turning a sactuary for prayer into a market (see Mark chapter 11).

Today I saw yet another article decrying fiscal abuses of the Papacy, this time revealing that funds donated for the "beatification" of Christians, the process purportedly of making a saint, is rife with suspected malfeasance. The Roman church continuously obfuscates the topic of sainthood by it's continuous promotion of certain deceased Christians to a higher level of honor. The article, "Pope Imposes Financial Oversight for Saints After Abuses" (published at CNSNEWS.COM), reveals that approximately .5 million dollars is spent on each incident of moving these people to sainthood!

This is an absolute waste, and harmful to Christian faith. It also makes Christians look stupid, and gives cause for the World to mock believers. Look in the New Testament letters of Paul to the churches, such as Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and the like, and you will see he opens such letters with the phrase, "to the saints," or "to the holy ones," which means simply that these were people already considered holy by association with Christ. These people were very much alive and did not have miracles attributed to their names, yet they are "saints"! There is NO need for any other form of sainthood! When a person comes to be born again through faith in Jesus they become a saint, considered holy in God's eyes through the merits of Christ! The only distinction which is properly made in regard to saints is whether they are living or departed (dead in the body, but with Christ in spirit). Any attempt to elevate them to a higher status is inappropriate and wasteful of the Christian church's resources. The Roman church continues to "steal" money away from missions by wasting it on the beatification process, and they do harm to the Gospel by misdirecting attention away from the merits of Christ toward deceased believers. Shame on the Pope and the Roman heirarchy!