Art Sippo has a finger lickin’ good time with some tired old accusations made by Chickian apologists. Art’s carvings are denoted in blue.
A friend of mine received these replies from you concerning the inaccuracies and out right lies in your publications. I was appalled at your answers. A Christian must hold themselves to a high standard of truthfulness in their discourse. The self serving lies in your publications are nothing but slanders leveled against historic Christianity with no foundation in fact. I provide the following comments for your edification in the hope that you will pursue the resources that I mention and do the right thing by withdrawing these publications and apologizing for the damage you may have done by them.
About "The Trail of Blood": There are quite a few people that agree on J.M. Carroll's work to be one of the best on the subject. It might have some inconsistencies or errors but what work of man doesn't? Mr. Chick has chosen for it to be available on the site. Sorry if you disagree.
"Quite a few people" say this? Who are these people? What are their credentials? They obviously know nothing about the history of the Church. Might I recommend that you read the book: "Baptist Successionism: : A Crucial Question in Baptist History by James Edward McGoldrick. This is a study by a Baptist scholar which thoroughly refutes the entire thesis of the trail of blood. It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that there were no low church "baptistic" Christian sects traceable in an unbroken line to Apostolic times, that all sects named by Carroll were historically discontinuous & unrelated to each other, that these same sects were all heretical by baptist/evangelical standards, and that all baptist sects are clearly protestant deriving their theology & practices from the 16th Century Protestant Revolt against the Church. This book makes it clear that the Landmarkist and Successsionist claims of some low Church sects are unfounded and indefensible.
About the 68 million killed in the inquisition: The resource Brother Chick was using is "The Other Side of Rome" by John B. Wilder, published by Zondervan in 1959, page 153. In this book, Wilder reports estimates from two different sources, ranging from 50 million to 68 million deaths during the Inquisition. And in truth: whether it was 68 million or 50 million or 3 million, does that really make a difference? Killing one person for the cause that Inquisition had, would have been one too many.
So you base this charge on one source only? Did you bother to check the validity of Wilder's claims independently? Had you bothered to do a little math, you would have discovered that the entire population of Europe at the height of the Middle ages was less than 20 Million people. The figures of either 68 or 50 million executions by the Spanish Inquisition during its 350 year tenure is physically impossible and ultimately ridiculous. The best estimate of the total number of executions under the Spanish Inquisition comes from the Encyclopedia Judaica (not a Catholic source) which estimates the number at around 7,000. It should be remembered that the Inquisition was a court charged with hearing cases for all crimes committed on Church property or against the Church, clerics, or professed religious. There were several capital crimes under the Inquisition's jurisdiction besides heresy. These included murder, rape, kidnapping, assault on a bishop, and others. Might I recommend that you get Henry Kamen's recent book The Spanish Inquisition : A Historical Revision (N.B.- Kamen's estimate is that there were only 3,000 executions.) I think you need to look at your resources more critically and not accept some anti-Catholic's word at face value with out doing some research.
About the Whore of Revelation: The subject is thoroughly covered in the book "A Woman Rides the Beast" by Dave Hunt.
Hunt's book is just more bigoted junk. Might I recommend that you read Ezekiel 16. You will find that the "whore" both there and Revelation17 is JERUSALEM, the location of the of the Jewish High Priest and the Temple. The whore is depicted as wearing the robes and diadem of the Jewish High Priest, not those later worn by the Popes. In fact, the identity of the city is clearly revealed in Revelation 11:8 as the city "where their Lord was crucified." In the end, it is always best to interpret Scripture with Scripture.
And lastly about Ralph Woodrow: As we understand he was confronted by a high school teacher who asked him a couple of questions that he could not answer immediately and so he withdrew his book from being published. It was a condensed version of the book "The Two Babylons" which we have no reason to doubt. We do not know all the circumstances that led him to make this decision but we wish him well.
The circumstance was that he was confronted by all of the lies in the text and out of a sense of personal integrity, he withdrew it from publication. Click on this hot link and you will see what Mr. Woodrow himself has to say about this: Woodrow's Book Catalog. Once again, if you would do you homework, you might learn the truth.
I hope this has been helpful to you and that you follow up on the resources which I have given to you. Anyone who wishes to proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ should do so with honesty and integrity and should eschew slander and lies.
Art Sippo
The Catholic Legate