December 1997 archive

More Vicarius Thrills – the numbers of the beast and the men who flub them

… by Patrick Madrid, Editor-in-Chief, Envoy Magazine … Do we need any more proof that apologetics is fun? Well, here’s more. When I wrote my article “Pope Fiction” (March/April 1998), I knew it might rile some people, and it did. Shortly after it appeared, I received a letter from a Mr. Allan Drisko. He didn’t care for my piece, especially my refutation of the 666 nonsense sometimes used against the papacy.

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The use of statues, pictures, and other icons in worship

Cristo Redentor - Rio

To me this is a fairly simple issue, and the problem lies in Protestant misinterpretation of the second commandment and of what the Bible says. It can be solved using the Bible alone, therefore I will deal with it first. The way I see it, the second commandment is conditional – we may make statues, pictures, etc., but we may not worship them. And since Catholics do not worship the images in their churches and homes, they are not breaking any of God’s commandments by using those images.

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Soul sleep – are the dead alive in heaven, or not?

First I’ll deal with the evolution of the concept of the state of the dead, and then get onto specific biblical arguments about it.

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