Introduction.
It is no secret to most people interested in this topic that the Catholic Church has adopted many pagan traditions and customs. This is something I have referred to in many of my blogs. Now I will spend some time looking at some of these similarities that pose a major problem for sincere seekers who want to get out of the confusion that Babylon poses in our time.
I will demonstrate similarities between dogmas that the Catholic Church has and dogmas that all the pagan religions that we find around the world have. The big question is whether these are only apparent similarities, or whether the Catholic Church has simply adopted these customs and made them Christian. Can a pagan tradition become a true Christian tradition just by introducing it into the church?
A small comparison could be this: You have a kilo of horse manure, and you wrap it in the prettiest package you can find, decorate it with the prettiest paper and the prettiest bows you can find. Does the packaging change the contents of the package? The answer is a resounding NO. Inside the package there is and always will be horse manure and only horse manure. It doesn’t matter how beautiful the package is on the outside, the content is and will remain the same. The same is true of pagan religions and traditions and human traditions and philosophy, they do not become Christian even if you wrap them in a Christian disguise. As you know, you do not become a horse just by walking into a stable! Right? The pagan religions and traditions and human traditions and human philosophy continue to be this, no matter what some church leaders claim.
All Bible texts are from the King James Version 1611/1769 unless otherwise stated.
The Eucharist.
The Catholic Church considers the Eucharist, along with baptism, to be the most important of the seven sacraments that the church believes are necessary for salvation and are seen as aids in a progression toward unity with God. The Eucharist is often called “the Most Holy Sacrament.” The Eucharist is seen as a sacrificial meal, a repetition of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. This view is simply blasphemous since Jesus was sacrificed once and for all. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God, [Romans 6:19, (New International Version 1984)].
Central to the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist is the belief in the real presence, that is, that the bread and wine are actually transformed into the body and blood of Christ, which are offered time after time after time … … every single time the Catholic Church celebrates the Eucharist, and it is something that most people are aware of doing every day. This means that Jesus is offered anew and again and again and again in every single Catholic church every time they celebrate the Eucharist.
The elements of the Eucharist still look like bread and wine, they still taste like bread and wine, and they still smell like bread and wine, but their substance has changed. This is called transubstantiation, and it is dogmatically defined, in other words, it is defined as a fundamental truth. Because it is not possible to fully understand what is really happening, the Catholic Church explains this transformation as a mystery of faith.
In Hebrews 9:12 we find this text: Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption [for us] … // … and in Hebrews 7:27 we find this: Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once, when he offered up himself. The Bible is therefore crystal clear on this, and then the Catholic Church becomes in opposition to the word of God once again. Actually neither unexpected nor surprising.
This transformation that occurs is called transubstantiation. The words that the priest says every time he lifts the chalice and says «hoc est corpus meum«, (which means this is my body), and every time he lifts the wine cup and says «hoc est sanguis meus«, (which means this is my blood), have formed the origin of a well-known expression that «other magicians» use daily: HOCUS-POCUS! A sworn Catholic will of course deny this, otherwise he is not a good Catholic, but then they deny Gods facts.
The transformation of the wine and bread is considered permanent, that is, the elements remain the body and blood of Christ. This state only ceases if the elements are no longer recognizable as bread and wine, e.g. when they have crumbled or turned into vinegar, respectively. Transformed (consecrated) bread is therefore kept in a special container. This sun cake, or wafer as the round biscuit can also be called, is honoured and worshipped by kneeling in front of the tabernacle when entering a church.
The Catholic Encyclopaedia readily admits that the roots of the Catholic interpretation of the Eucharist have their beginning in the feast of the gods in the Babylonian religion of Baal. From this religion the custom of the ritual of the flesh of the gods became widespread. The Catholic Church does not hide the origin of this custom, they do not even try to hide it.
In Egypt, a round cake was consecrated (made «holy») by a priest so that after this blessing the cake was transformed into the body of the god Osiris. Also among tribes in Mexico and Central America, who had never heard of Christ, there were ceremonies where the eating of the flesh of the gods was practiced. Several historians show that the tradition of eating the flesh of the gods in several primitive tribal religions was cannibalism. This means that pagan priests ate parts of all sacrifices, including human sacrifices.
When humans were sacrificed, the priests of Ba’al were commanded to eat human flesh. The expression Cahna-Bal, or priest of Ba’al is also the origin of our word cannibal. The word carnival, a festival that the Catholic Church celebrates, also has its origin in the same expression, and refers to the Latin (Spanish) carne de Ba’al, which is meat sacrificed to the god Ba’al expressed as carnival.
The host in the Catholic Mass is a round biscuit. This shape was first mentioned by St. Epiphanius in the fourth century. When Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper, he simply took unleavened bread and broke it into pieces. Bread is not broken into round pieces. In the Bible, the breaking of bread in connection with the Lord’s Supper symbolizes the broken body of Jesus.
But why does the papal church use a round biscuit? It is for the same reason as the need to make the bread and wine into actual divine flesh, and to coordinate its rituals with the pagan customs of the Babylonian mystery religions. The round biscuit is a pure copy of the round sun cake that is made into Ba’al’s flesh in the Babylonian religion through transubstantiation. It was so that the sun god Ba’al demanded a round sacrifice that symbolized the sun – a solar symbol.
The Catholic Church has a feast in honor of the sun cake, the wafer, or the round biscuit that the Catholic Church uses during the Eucharist. This feast is called Sollemnitas Sanctissimi Corporis et Sanguinis Christi, which in everyday speech has become Corpus Christi, or simply the feast of the body of Christ, and is celebrated once a year, 60 days after Easter. This is a Catholic holiday that celebrates what in Catholic doctrine is the presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, through the doctrine of transubstantiation.
This custom of carrying the sun cake in procession around the streets where there are Catholic churches is still practiced in all countries around the world. When I was in Peru for the first time, it coincided with the celebration of Corpus Christi. During this feast, I was served a traditional-religious meal consisting of seven different dishes that were supposed to symbolize this action. I was still an atheist at the time, so I had no objection to participating in this meal. Today, I would not participate in such a meal as long as it is in honour of this sun cake that symbolizes the sun god. Even in Norway, the Catholic Church has this celebration of the sun cake, which we see annually in Oslo where the procession leaves from St. Olav’s Church, which is located opposite my church, the Adventist Church of Bethel.
In the Old Testament we find several examples of the people of Israel forsaking their God and worshipping idols in the same way as the pagans around them. These false religions worshipped both the queen of heaven* and offered round biscuits, which were turned into idol meat. In Jeremiah 7:18 we read how the God of heaven is dismayed by this apostasy; The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead [their] dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.
* The Queen of Heaven is most likely the Assyrian/Babylonian goddess Ishtar. Ishtar is also the origin of the English word for Easter.
In Canaan, Ishtar was called Astarte and is mentioned in Ezekiel 8:3 where this goddess is associated with the image of jealousy, or idolatry: And he put forth the form of an hand, and took me by a lock of mine head; and the spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the inner gate that looketh toward the north; where [was] the seat of the image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy..
In the 13th century, a feast was instituted in honor of the body of Christ (Corpus Christi). This Mass of honour was written by the scholastic* Thomas Aquinas, and as part of the celebration, the round consecrated host, the sun cake, which actually represents the sun god, is carried in procession through the city. This is a detailed copy of the procession in ancient Babylon where the sun cake was carried through the streets in honor of the sun god.
* Scholasticism was a theological/philosophical movement and was especially widespread in monastic schools and cathedral schools in Europe from the 12th century until the 16th century. Scholasticism’s goal was to unite Christian doctrine with the logic of Plato and Aristotle. Scholasticism recognized Aristotle as an authority, and Thomas Aquinas wanted to connect faith and reason in his book Summa Theologica, where the existence of God is proven by means of Aristotle’s argument that all causal chains must have a first cause. Aquinas is considered the greatest theologian in the Catholic Church, and on August 4, 1879, Pope Leo XIII declared that Aquinas’ theological system should be Catholic normal theology. It should have been an absurd thought for upstanding and serious Christians that a theologian who wanted to unite Christianity and pagan philosophy should be made the leading theologian of the world’s largest church, as Thomas Aquinas became.
The worship of Mary.
The Catholic Church worships Mary, and they also took this from pagan religions. The Chinese have a mother goddess or queen of heaven called Shingmo, which means holy mother. On her lap she has a baby boy. This mother/baby boy constellation is found in all the pagan religions of the world. Shingmo is often depicted with a glory ring around her head. We also find Semiramis depicted with her child Tammuz and a glory ring. The ancient Germanic tribes worshipped Hertha* with her baby boy. The Etruscans had Nutria with an infant in her arm, and among the Druids there was the mother goddess Virgio-Patitura. In India the mother goddess’s name was Indrani. The Greeks had Aphrodite, and the Sumerians worshipped Nana. The Romans stuck to Venus (or Fortuna) with the child Jupiter in her arms. In Asia the mother and child constellation were called Cybele and Deoius. And in Babylon we find Isis and Horus.
* In Germany there is a football club called Hertha Berlin.
The most well-known mother/child constellations are: Semiramis and Tammuz, Isis and Horus, Venus and Jupiter, Cyblee and Deoius, Devaki and Krishna, Indrani and Jayanta. In Catholic art we often see Mary with the baby Jesus on her arm.
In the Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 15, page 459, under the article Virgin Mary, it is said that the beginning of the worship of Mary is considered to be a practical adaptation that was not part of the apostolic faith, but a later development. More accurately, it cannot be said, unbiblical, pagan and convenient for those who do not want to follow the Bible. A church that produces “truths” and “doctrines” without regard to what the Bible teaches about them, is not a Christian church.
It was not until the time of Emperor Constantine, early in the 4th century, that Mary was made a goddess. About 100 years later, in the year 431 in Ephesus, where Diana was worshipped as the goddess and queen of heaven, that the worship of Mary was incorporated as regular doctrine into the Roman Church.
History provides ample evidence that the unbiblical worship of Mary had its origins in pagan goddess worship. One of Mary’s many titles are Madonna. Hislop mentions in his works that Madonna is also one of the names of the Babylonian goddess Semiramis. As a god, Nimrod was called Ba’al, and Nimrod was an image of Satan. His female goddess was called Baalti, which means My Lady. In Latin, it is Mea Domina, which became the popular expression, Madonna. When Catholics pray to Mary and call her Madonna, it clearly means that they are worshipping the pagan Baalti.
To make the parallel between Mary and Semiramis complete, Pope Pius XII declared in 1951 that Mary was taken to heaven and exalted to the position of Queen of Heaven. This, according to the 1951 declaration, was supposed to have happened on the third day after her death. When the apostles gathered around Mary’s tomb, they discovered, the church says, that the tomb was empty.
The Catholic Church teaches that Mary is also a mediator between humans and God, and we know that prayers to Mary are an important part of Catholic worship. In Luke 11:27-28, we are told that a woman in the crowd praised Jesus by crying out: … Blessed [is] the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked. But immediately Jesus corrects her and says: … Yea rather, blessed [are] they that hear the word of God, and keep it.
On December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX declared that Mary was free from all original sin, Mary’s Immaculate Conception. This has to do with Mary’s own conception and birth. She was declared sinless in the same way the Bible declares that Jesus is without sin. This Catholic dogma corresponds to the declaration of sinlessness that the queen of heaven Semiramis claimed for herself. This doctrine is completely unbiblical in every way and represents pure Babylonian paganism. The statement blasphemes God, is unbiblical, and a mockery of God’s Word.
Another crazy Catholic doctrine is the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual (lifelong) virginity. This doctrine was declared at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. According to God’s Word, Jesus had at least 2 sisters and 4 brothers. The Catholic Church teaches that Mary and Joseph never had a sexual relationship in their marriage and that she therefore had no more children than Jesus.
The Bible’s statements about Jesus’ sisters and brothers are explained away by the Catholic Church by saying that these were cousins, aunts, and other peripheral members of Joseph and Mary’s extended family, who could also technically be called brothers and sisters. It seems more important to the Catholic Church that Mary be assimilated to the pagan queen of heaven Semiramis than that she be the person the Bible describes.
About the Council of Chalcedon, Wikipedia states the following: The Council of Chalcedon was an ecumenical council held from October 8 to November 1, 451 in the city of Chalcedon in Bithynia, which is located in northwest Turkey on the Black Sea. This council is the fourth of the seven universally recognized ecumenical councils and is thus considered by the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church to be infallible in its dogmatic definitions.
When Catholics use the rosary in their prayer rituals, they pray to Mary about 9 times more often than to Jesus. Many Catholic theologians write that prayers to Mary are answered more quickly and are more effective than prayers to the Son of God. They say that Mary personally takes care of all prayers sent up to her, which according to one theologian amounts to about 45,000 prayers per second, and that Jesus is more gentle towards Mary, so that prayers through her are treated with greater attention.
With its repetitive rosary prayers, the Catholic Church identifies itself with the pagan tradition. The rosary is not a Catholic invention, it existed long before in the pagan religions, and has been Christianized by the papacy. I mentioned the package of horse dung at the beginning, and it is nothing other than what we see here – a neatly wrapped package … … Mohammedans have always used a prayer rosary. They have garlands of 33, 66 or 99 beads, on which the many names of Allah are mentioned. (Mohammedans also pray to Mary, the mother of Jesus.) The Phoenicians used the rosary when praying to the queen of heaven Astarte 800 BC. The Buddhists of India and Tibet also use it.
The worship of saint and prayers to the dead.
In Marianism, people pray to Mary, the mother of Jesus. The problem with this is that she is dead. The one they are really praying to when they pray to Mary, or Madonna, as she is also called, is Baalti. She is the queen of Ba’al, who is none other than Satan. In addition to the fact that they are worshipping Baalti when they pray to Mary, prayers to Mary are nothing more than prayers to a dead person. The Bible strongly warns against such a practice and calls it spiritism. Prayers to deceased people are pagan idolatry.
In the last two to three centuries before the birth of Jesus, the Jews had quite close relations with the Persians and Greeks. As we know, these had developed a view of the dead and their world. In Persia, it was taught that the soul, after waiting in the earth for three days, had to cross a bridge to get to paradise. The more sins the deceased had committed, the more the bridge shook and shook, and the person who crossed the bridge fell into hell to be purified. In Greece, the soul was taught to be immortal. This doctrine was developed by Plato.
By the time of Jesus, the Jews had adopted these teachings from Persia and Greece, which say that the soul is immortal and that the soul is punished after death according to the sins the individual has committed. This idea, developed by Plato, still has many followers today. The origin of this idea dates back to the Garden of Eden, and Satan’s great lie: Ye shall not surely die! (Genesis 3:4).
In addition to the veneration of Mary, Catholics also pray to a number of saints. According to Catholic belief, these are ordinary people who have distinguished themselves with special holiness or achievements for the church. After their death, they are – as a result of an examination – designated as saints and declared to be taken to heaven.
This custom can easily be traced back to the false religion of Babylon. But let us first understand who the Word of God calls Saints, or saints. The word saint is not a biblical word. All true Christians are saints according to the Bible. When Paul writes his letters to the churches in Rome (Romans 1:7), Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:2), and Ephesus (Ephesians 1:1), he addresses his letters to the saints. Here we are dealing with living people who believed in and followed their Jesus Christ. If the Word of God, not pagan tradition, is the source of our faith, we should contact living people, not the dead, if we want the intercession of saints.
Although the Catholic Church is full of saints, this is something we find in almost all pagan religions. What the Catholic Church has done is only to continue this pagan tradition – as they have done with so many of the unbiblical doctrines they have dressed in a Christian cloak. To name a few religions we are familiar with that have saints, I can name the following: From Cuba: Santeria; from Haiti: Voodoo; from Trinidad Orisha-Shango; from Brazil Umbanda and Candomblé. In addition, we find it in Hinduism; Buddhism; Islam; among Sikhs and in new religious movements.
The Catholic Encyclopaedia explains to us that Catholic teaching regarding prayers for the dead has its roots in the apostolic church. This claim is demonstrably false. This practice was formulated sometime around the 11th century by saying that the saints reign with Christ in heaven and that they pray to God for people. It suffices to point out how Jesus taught us to pray. This prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, is found in Matthew 6:9-13 and begins with the words: Our Father, which art in heaven. In other words, we should pray directly to God, and then we forget the extra-biblical addition that the Catholic Church has added.
As we know, the Roman Church has removed the second commandment which tells us that we should not have any form of imitations of anything in heaven above, on earth below, or in the water under the earth. This also includes saints and the blessed. The second commandment reads as follows: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness [of anything] that [is] in heaven above, or that [is] in the earth beneath, or that [is] in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God [am] a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth [generation] of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments, (Exodus 20:4-6). This commandment consists of a total of 90 words in King Jammes Version 1611/1769 and is the second longest commandment in God’s Ten Commandments.
This commandment would have been very problematic for the Catholic Church if it had been left unchanged in their catechism. The reason why this would have been problematic is that the Catholic Church has no less than 11,600 individuals and groups of individuals who have been canonized, that is, proclaimed saints or beatified, or sub-gods as I choose to call them. The Catholic Church encourages its members to pray to these individuals, because as the Catholic Church says, it is the good deeds that these saints and beatified did when they were alive, combined with the good deeds of Mary and Jesus, that work for our salvation.
The Bible is clear that it is the blood of Jesus, and that alone, that can save us. This was something that God reminded Israel of while they were still at Sinai. God said this through Moses: For the life of the flesh [is] in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it [is] the blood [that] maketh an atonement for the soul, (Leviticus 17:11). Now many will probably be quick to say that this only applied in Old Testament times, but that is wrong. See what the author of the Letter to the Hebrews says: And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission, (Hebrews 9:22). It is believed that this letter was written before the year 70, when the destruction of the temple is not mentioned, in any case it was written after Jesus died, and shows that the validity of the principle that Leviticus draws out is also valid in Christian times. It is the blood of Jesus that saves us, not His good works that are mixed with the good works of randomly selected people. If good works had been enough, Jesus died in vain on the cross.
Revelation 5:9 also tells us that it is the blood of Jesus that saves us: … … … for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.
Peter also agrees with the rest of the Bible, saying in 1 Peter 1:18-19 this: Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, [as] silver and gold, from your vain conversation [received] by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.
Almost as usual, the Catholic Church is on a collision course with what God says through His Word, the Bible.
The mysterious keys.
Let’s look at the historical background. Nimrod, Noah’s great-grandson, was the king and founder of Babel (Babylon). He was also a priest, and so we have a priest-king. All of Babylon’s leaders since Nimrod’s time have been priest-kings, and as priest-kings they were the heads of Babylon’s occult mystery religions. The title they held was Pontifex Maximus. When the last Western Roman emperor moved out of Rome, the bishop of Rome, Bishop Demasus, took over this title, Pontifex Maximus, and all leaders of the church in Rome have carried this title ever since.
Now there are many who deny that the Pope calls himself Pontifex Maximus, but this is engraved in several places in St. Peter’s Basilica, including above the statue dedicated to Peter, which is an old statue of Jupiter.
But there is a good reason why the papacy uses this title. The original pagan Pontifex Maximus had many titles, and among them we find the Chaldean title Petér, (note the spelling, not Peter, but Petér) which means interpreter of the mysteries. What the Catholic Church did was to clothe an old pagan tradition with a Christian mantle, and thus they were able to attach this title to Peter, and they claimed that Peter was in Rome and was elected both bishop of Rome and pope of the whole church.
At first there was even opposition within the Roman Church to Peter’s apparent election as bishop and pope of Rome, but the opposition gradually disappeared. But as with all the deceptions the Catholic Church has launched, one day the truth will come out, and the Catholic Encyclopaedia states that: Peter’s presence in Rome is a practical tradition that emerged in the 3rd century.
With this forgery the Catholic Church managed to reach both the unenlightened Christians, for whom the Pope became Peter’s successor, and the pagans who found their Peter, the interpreter of the occult mystery religions – the Pontifex Maximus. It was not until the year 431 AD that the claim that the Pope was in possession of the mystical keys of Peter became known to the public. The tragedy of this matter, of course, is that the Catholic Church, which claims to have the keys of eternity, is described in the Word of God as the minion of Satan and the enemy of God.
If it were true that Jesus had appointed Peter as the church’s first pope, there are a few things that are not in line with this claim from the Catholic Church. In Mark 10:35-37 we read that the brothers James and John asked to sit at Jesus’ right and left hand when He had established His kingdom. The custom at that time was that the two highest in rank after the king should sit on the king’s right and left hand.
If the Catholic Church’s claims are correct, it would have been natural for Jesus to tell James and John that Peter was next in rank, not the two sons of thunder. In verses 42 and 43 we find the answer Jesus gave them: … … Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great one’s exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you … This means that in God’s church people are not to be called popes and have power and authority like the kings and emperors of the world. This is the way of the world, not God.
It is also of the utmost interest to read what Jesus says in Matthew 23:8-10: But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, [even] Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no [man] your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, [even] Christ. Yet the Pope, the Cardinals, and the other clergy in the Catholic Church expect to be called father. Understand it whoever can.
Another easily documented mix of paganism, and the Bible has to do with the keys of heaven. For a long time, pagan religions have claimed that it was the god Janus and the goddess Cybele* who were in possession of the mysterious keys of eternity. In Mithraism, which was popular in Rome at the time of Jesus, the sun god was often depicted with two keys. When the emperor claimed to be the god’s successor and pontiff, the Pontifex Maximus, the same keys became the symbol of his authority. Later, when the bishop of Rome became the new Pontifex Maximus after the emperor moved out of Rome and to Constantinople, he automatically became the owner of the mystery keys.
* It is worth noting that Cybele, or Kybele, was originally a mother goddess in Anatolia, and that Cybele took on aspects of the earth goddess Gaia.
Some of the verses that have caused great misunderstanding are found in Matthew chapter 16. The text is as follows: And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven, (Matthew 16:18-19).
Here are three words that need explaining, Peter, the rock, and the keys, for the ideologists of the Catholic Church have, as is their wont, seen an opportunity to make yet another “Peter-as-Pope” parallel. In Matthew 16:18 Jesus says, “thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church”. The Greek word for Peter is petros, and means stone, while the Greek word for rock is petra. It is Jesus who is the rock, and He is the foundation and chief cornerstone of the church.
Let’s look at the problematic word “keys.” The keys to the kingdom of heaven are the words of Christ, see John 1:12 and 17:3, which tell us that it is about having knowledge. It is important to note that Christ Himself, in Luke 11:52, speaks of the key here referred to as the key of knowledge of how to enter the kingdom.
In John 6:63 Jesus says that the words He speaks to the disciples are spirit and life (to all who receive them). In John 6:68 Peter says that it is Jesus who has the words of eternal life. The word of God is the key to the new-birth experience, (1 Peter 1:23).
As the words spoken by Jesus convinced the disciples of His divinity, so their repeating of His words to other men, as His ambassadors, was to reconcile them to God (see 2 Corinthians 5:18-20). The saving power of the gospel is the only thing that admits men and women into the kingdom of heaven. Christ simply bestowed upon Peter and all the other disciples (Matthew 18:18; John 20:23) the authority and power to bring men into the kingdom. It was Peter’s perception of the truth that Jesus is indeed the Christ that placed the keys of the kingdom in his possession and let him into the kingdom, and the same may be said of all Christ’s followers to the very close of time. The argument that Christ bestowed upon Peter a degree of authority greater than, or different from, that which He gave to the other disciples, is without scriptural basis (Matthew 16:18). As a matter of fact, among the apostles it was James and not Peter who had and exercised administrative functions over the early church in Jerusalem (Acts 12:17; 15:13.19; 21:18; 1 Corinthians 15:7; Galatians 2:9.12). Upon at least one occasion Paul “withstood” Peter “to the face” for a wrong course of action (see Galatians 2:11-14), which he certainly would not have done had he known anything about Peter’s enjoying the rights and prerogatives that some now claim for him upon the basis of Matthew 16:18-19.
Christ did not entrust the work of the gospel to Peter personally. When He later repeated what He had said to Peter, He applied it directly to the church. The same was also stated to the twelve as representatives of the community of believers. If Jesus had given special authority to one of the disciples over the others, they would not have so often argued about who was the greatest. They would have followed Jesus’ wishes and honoured the one he had chosen.
The keys, of course, are not a mystical authority/power given by God to one of the disciples. The keys are simply the knowledge of God’s word that is necessary to attain eternal life in Christ.