Rebuttal to Mario Derksen on Antichrist

Mario Derksen's article is presented in the boxes, and my comments in rebuttal follow them.

Seventh-Day Adventists (SDAs) love to spread their teaching that the Pope must be the Antichrist and the Catholic Church the Whore of Babylon.

Admittedly, if you don't know much about your Catholic faith, their arguments may sound very convincing, and, of course, they look like they are "Bible-based." Oh well. You can tell the Bible has become the play-toy of heretics, for countless different denominations which all teach different things say their teachings are "Bible-based."

But anyway. I already have issued a challenge against the SDAs about the 666 game, and it has so far remained unanswered. If you're a SDA, please check out my challenge "The Pope, the Beast, and 666." Here now, though, I would like to give brief but irrefutable proof that the Catholic Church cannot be satanic, not the Whore of Babylon, and therefore the Pope cannot be the Antichrist. How am I going to do this? Easy. I'm going to use the Bible. The Catholic Church is accused of being satanic; she is said to be the "apostate church."

Well, our Savior Jesus Christ had, when He was on earth, kind of the same problem. He was driving demons out, and so some said He was doing this by the power of the devil. What did Jesus respond? Let me quote it for you:

Mark 3:23-26

And after he had called them together, he said to them in parables: How can Satan cast out Satan? And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan be risen up against himself, he is divided, and cannot stand, but hath an end.

Jesus responded that if He were of the devil, He could not drive out demons, because that would not work, for "a divided kingdom cannot stand." Satan would be destroying himself in the process.

Now, listen to this:
The Catholic Church drives out the devil, too. This practice is called "exorcism." You can't deny that the Catholic Church has been doing exorcisms on people and driven out Satan that way for nearly two millennia. Therefore, we must reason just like Jesus: if the Catholic Church were from the devil, it could not drive the devil out. For, as Jesus said, "A divided kingdom cannot stand." The Catholic Church, however, has been standing for nearly 2,000 years. Jesus refuted the argument that He is of the devil by saying that Satan could not stand then, and I claim the same about the Church.

This now is my quick-response to any and all arguments of the SDAs. There is no need for me to refute any other argument as long as there is no qualified and effective counter-response by the SDAs.

Note that at the end of time many will say to the Lord they have done many wonderful works in His name, to include casting out devils, a practice Catholics define as exorcism. However, as the above passage in Matthew makes quite clear, even those who profess to cast out devils (perform exorcisms) can indeed be workers of iniquity.

On the contrary, Adventists need admit no such thing, the evidence being to the contrary. Regarding 1 John 2:22, see my essay

Antichrist: Denying Jesus Christ is Come in the Flesh which goes into this point in some detail, and shows quite clearly that the Roman Catholic Church in fact denies Jesus is the Christ, and so deny the Father as well.

The evidence presented shows that Mario Derksen has actually proved nothing in that regard.