"The papacy “took away” the heavenly mediation of Christ by obscuring it with Rome’s own inventions, such as the mass. First, the papacy replaces the heavenly mediation of Christ (Heb. 8:6; 9:15; 1 Tim. 2:5) with the mediation of an earthly priest.
This takes the focus away from our sinless Substitute and places it on a sinful man, to whom we are supposed to confess our sins and seek absolution.
Ellen White had this to say about confession to an earthly priest:
“He who kneels before fallen man, and opens in confession the secret thoughts and imaginations of his heart, is debasing his manhood and degrading every noble instinct of his soul.
In unfolding the sins of his life to a priest,—an erring, sinful mortal, and too often corrupted with wine and licentiousness,—his standard of character is lowered, and he is defiled in consequence. His [conception] of God is degraded to the likeness of fallen humanity, for the priest stands as a representative of God. This degrading confession of man to man is the secret spring from which has flowed much of the evil that is defiling the world and fitting it for the final destruction.”
Great Controversy, p. 567.3
Second, the papacy teaches that, through a miracle called “transubstantiation,” Christ is really present in the eucharist—hoc est corpus (“here is the body”), meaning that here in the wafer is the real, physical body of Christ. Christ is thus sacrificed anew each time the mass is performed.
One Catholic writer puts it this way:
“When the priest pronounces the tremendous words of consecration,he reaches up into the heavens, brings Christ down from His throne,
and places Him upon our altar to be offered up again as the victim for the sins of man. It is a greater power than that of monarchs and potentates. . . . the priest brings Christ down from heaven, and renders Him incarnate on our altar as the eternal Victim for the sins of man—not once but a thousand times! The priest speaks, and lo! Christ, the eternal and omnipotent God, bows His head in humble obedience to the priest’s command.”—Our Sunday Visitor, June 14, 1936
It is difficult to conceive of the ecclesiastical self-aggrandizement necessary to produce such a statement. Indeed, this “little horn” speaks “boastful,” “pompous” words, “boasting arrogantly”! (Dan. 7:8, 11)
And Scripture could not be any clearer that Christ was sacrificed only once (Heb. 9:12), and ever afterward we have only to claim that sacrifice by faith:
“For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; He entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. Nor did He enter heaven to offer Himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But He has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him.” Heb. 9:24-28.
That Christ was to be sacrificed only once and ever after accessed by faith was symbolized when Moses was first to strike the rock (Ex. 17:6), and subsequently to speak to it (Num. 20:8). (See, 1 Cor. 10:1-4).
Moses’ disobedience in that one seemingly minor point is why he was not allowed to lead Israel into Canaan. (Num. 20:8-12).
By its doctrine of the mass, the Papacy has obscured the truth that Christ was sacrificed only once for the sins of the whole world
(1 John 2:2), and there is no need for a repeated or continuing sacrifice.
The obscuring of Christ’s work of mediation in the heavenly sanctuary is so complete that it can be said that the heavenly sanctuary was cast down during the long ages of papal supremacy.
Daniel 8:12: “And the host [the people of God] was given over to it [the papacy] together with the continual [mediation in heaven] through transgression; and it [the papacy] cast down truth to the ground, and it [the papacy] did its pleasure and prospered.” Read/F7
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