About those "gates of Hell"...
- Bible Brian
- 3 hours ago
- 8 min read
Matthew 16:18 is a favorite verse for Roman Catholics. First, it is a foundational verse for their Church, because they officially contend that it is their origins story. When Jesus says "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church...", the Catholic Church officially teaches that He was bestowing the Papacy upon Peter, and that this is from whence all Popes since have derived their authority.
There are huge numbers of problems with this anachronistic interpretation, many of which you will find under the Papacy tab in the Reaching Catholics section. For this article, however, we will focus on the latter half of the verse: "...and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Naturally, this results in the dogma of the Indefectibility of the Catholic Church. That is, the Catholic Church will always exist without losing its essential characteristics. Many Catholic apologists take this verse not merely as proof of doctrine, but actually, evidence of success.
In order to do this, they start by pointing out that the Catholic Church is still here. The Reformation didn't erase it, and actually, Catholics still vastly outnumber Protestants. This, supposedly, proves that the Catholic Church is guarded by Christ, fulfilling His promise that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.
For anyone familiar with Scripture, which of course Catholics rarely are, this argument should actually be considered stronger evidence to the contrary. While it's true that Christ does promise His Church will endure (though as we'll see shortly, this isn't one of those verses), He also shows that there is another thing that will endure: Sin. Relating to this, He warns us "“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few." (Matthew 7:13-14).
So what does this tell us? Well, it's not a hard and fast rule. It doesn't mean it's impossible for truth to become popular, or that we should be seeking out the smallest possible denomination and figuring out what they believe. But what it does mean, indisputably, is that boasting about the popularity of your denomination is a very backwards, very worldly, and of course massively illogical thing to do.
There is no greater proof of concept in this case than the Jew. First, historically, we see that even though God promises to preserve them, as He does the Church, they often went through times of great apostasy. Romans 11 speaks about this in great depth, telling us "I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” But what is God's reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace."
In Elijah's time, we are reminded that a mere 7,000 faithful Jews had not bowed the knee to Baal. What, then, if our numbers should drop so low? If we, who have never bowed the knee to Marian idols, were a mere 7,000 strong, this would be sufficient for God to have kept His promises to preserve the Church. And yet, through every era, there have been more than 7,000 Christians. In fact, for the first 2 centuries, there were more than 7,000 Christians, and no Catholics! So this really isn't a numbers game Catholics should want to play. They will lose every time, because faith isn't a Democracy. It's a Theocracy. The entire Church, even the entire world, cannot overrule the word of God.
However, in unrighteousness, we can (and do) suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). Which brings us full circle back to the gates of Hell. One thing you'll notice is that Jesus, rather than mentioning a weapon one might use to attack and destroy, is actually referring to a defensive structure. Had Jesus intended to frame Hell as an attacker trying to get rid of the Church, He would have said "the swords of Hell", "the bows of Hell", or even "the soldiers of Hell". But no, He says "the gates of Hell". This is because He intends to frame Hell as the defender. The Church is the attacker.
Without trying to build more on Christ's original analogy than He intended, Hell does have several gates to break through. Furthermore, we are told in 2 Corinthians 10:1-6 "I, Paul, myself entreat you, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ—I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away!— I beg of you that when I am present I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of walking according to the flesh. For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete."
While Paul does not directly link this thought to Matthew 16:18, the similar themes are undeniable. In both passages, the Church (i.e. the individual members of the body of Christ) finds itself against some kind of defensive structure (strongholds, of course, have gates), and are given divine power to destroy them. Paul fleshes his analogy out (pun intended) by describing the spiritual weapons with which we do so. While some suspected the Church of waging war according to the flesh, we actually operate under the assumption that the pen is mightier than the sword. We destroy arguments and lofty opinions that are raised against the knowledge of God.
The Reformation is a fantastic example of when the Church did exactly that. The Catholic Church, even today, is a Church of lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of God. It arrogantly seizes authority it never legitimately had, uses it to declare false doctrines neither Christ nor His Apostles ever actually taught, denies the very Gospel the early Church received, and whenever Scripture is used to correct all of this, they have the audacity to claim they are the ones who gave it to us!
Historically, the attitude was the same, they were just a lot more violent about it. To the Reformers, it really was about spiritual warfare. When Martin Luther nailed up his famous 95 Theses (an ironically Catholic document), it was a challenge to debate, not a call to take up arms. Yet, the Catholic Church did take up arms against Luther. His survival is primarily due to the protection he enjoyed from secular authority.
Other Reformers were not so lucky. Luther's forerunner in the faith, Jan Hus, was accused of heresy. He was promised safe passage, but was condemned as a heretic, treated abysmally in prison, tied to a stake, and set on fire. Interestingly, his final words, while they vary by account, were "you are now going to cook this goose, but in 100 years, you will have a swan that you can neither catch nor boil". 102 years later, Luther sparked the Reformation. It cannot be proven, but it is suggested (and Luther himself believed) that Hus may have actually been given divine insight into the Reformation, specifically seeing Luther's success.
Just as Jan Hus was burned at the stake, so also was William Tyndale. Tyndale's "crime" was also heresy, but in reality, this "heresy" is the belief that the Bible should be publicly available in the vulgar tongue. In his time, this was considered very dangerous, and in response, a bishop (presumed to be John Bell) once said to Tyndale "It would be better to be without God's laws than the Pope's." To this, Tyndale famously replied "I defy the Pope and all his laws! If God spareth my life ere many years, I shall cause the boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost!"
We see, then, just how Hellish the Catholic Church truly was. While the Biblical response to even a genuine heretic is peaceful disengagement (Matthew 10:14; Mark 6:11; Luke 9:5; Luke 10:11; Acts 13:51), the Catholic response to the Bible was brutal torture and violent murder. This is so obviously devoid of the Spirit of the same God who was also tried for heresy and passed off to secular authority as a martyr.
Following the success of the swan they could neither catch, nor boil, modern Catholics have a rather unhealthy obsession with him. No matter the dispute, they have been conditioned to insult, belittle, and even slander him, attributing all dissent from Catholicism to him. What they fail to realise is that Luther was never regarded as a Papal figure. He's not the cornerstone of our faith, nor even a pillar. All he did was lead a successful march against the Catholic stronghold. With spiritual weapons, he and the Reformers charged the gates of Hell, and as a result, even the carnal weapons used by Satan's counterfeit Church are no longer effective. Rather than being pen vs. sword, the battle between Christianity and Catholicism has now been reduced to pen vs. pen.
And of course, we tend to win those battles, because faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. Thus, all it takes to thoroughly refute the Catholic Church is to make use of the right the Reformers shed their blood to buy us: Read it in our own language. I know, and can make it known, that the Catholic Church is not the one true Church Jesus founded, because I know, and can make it known, what that Church is actually supposed to believe (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
This, of course, does not mean there won't always be Catholics. If a partial hardening has come upon God's covenant people, how can we expect to ever eradicate false Churches? The world is filled to the brim with perishing souls, many of whom will permanently deprive themselves of eternal life. But that is where the emphasis lies. When we raid a prison, it is not on us to force the captives to flee. Should they choose to sit stubbornly in their open cell, this is no victory on their part. When we stand before our Commander, we will receive the reward for the strongholds we destroyed.
AI usage
Chat GPT generated the knight, the Church behind the gate, and the gathered Reformers, in the header image.
ChatGPT was used to generate a more literal version of Ref Toons' cartoon of the martyrdom of Jan Hus.
The song was generated using Mozart AI, and the cover image was generated with ChatGPT.
Comments