What is the Assumption of Mary?

Protestants note that the superveneration has grown through the centuries, beginning with tradition taught as early as the fourth century that Mary's virginity continued after the birth of Jesus and that she never had any more children. Other doctrines that grew out of tradition include the Immaculate Conception (she was conceived without sin and lived a sinless life), proclaimed dogma in 1854 by Pope Pius IX, and the doctrine of the Assumption (that she was taken up body and soul directly to heaven), proclaimed dogma in 1950 by Pope Pius XIL

Now if the Virgin, “blessed among women,” had a Saviour, she must have needed a Saviour. And if she needed a Saviour, she must have been a sinner, like every member of the fallen human race.

To be consistent, if Romanists believe the Virgin was sinless, then death could not have been her portion, for “the wages of sin is death.” So they claim that she miraculously ascended to Heaven without dying on the 15th August, A.D. 45. There is not a single line of Scripture for the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, nor for her translation to Heaven without dying.

Since the 16th century she has added to her blasphemies and errors the declaration of the absolute sinlessness of the Virgin Mary, lifting her to the position of a female God, and declared that she was caught up to heaven without dying and crowned queen of heaven.

Building on its claim to be the only infallible authority as to what Scripture really means, the Catholic Church has understandably been rather subjective in interpreting various passages of Scripture to make the Bible fit or support its traditions. It is incorrect to say Roman Catholics have no scriptural base for their teachings. They find scriptural base either by directly interpreting certain passages to mean what they believe the passages mean or by finding their doctrines to be implicitly taught in Scripture. In other words, dogmas such as the immaculate conception, the bodily assumption of Mary, and papal infallibility are implied in Scripture and, when viewed according to the teachings of the papacy, they make perfectly good sense to Roman Catholics.

The whole thing is a pure invention with the object of leading Roman Catholics to the idolatrous worship of the mother of our Lord according to the flesh. We shall see to what lengths Rome can go in this direction.

Here is an extract from a sermon of St. Bernard, taken from a Breviary of the Church of Rome:

All this is ascribed to a poor fallen creature, most highly honoured surely in being the mother of our Lord according to the flesh, yet a sinner, needing the salvation her Son procured for her by His death of shame upon the cross. Her bones lie mouldering in the grave these eighteen hundred years. All this mariolatry is simply speaking into the air a stream of futile blasphemy. It cannot and does not reach Heaven.

Who is represented by the sun-clothed woman? Romanists have made out of her the Virgin Mary. Many expositors claim it is the Church which is represented by this woman. Some claim the woman is the professing Church and the man-child represents, according to their view, a class of overcomers who will escape the tribulation. This is a favored interpretation of some of the so-called "holiness people."

On the 15th of August 1534, being the festival of the assumption of the Virgin Mary, in one of the subterranean chapels of Montmartre, and after receiving the sacrament, they all took the usual vows of poverty and chastity; and then took a solemn oath to dedicate themselves to the conversion of the Saracens at Jerusalem, and the care of the Christians, and to lay themselves and their services unreservedly at the feet of the pontiff. "The army thus enrolled was little, and it was great. It was little when counted, it was great when weighed. To foster the growth of this infant Hercules, Loyola had prepared beforehand his book, entitled 'Spiritual Exercises.' This is a body of rules for teaching men how to conduct the work of their own conversion. It consists of four grand meditations, and the penitent, retiring into solitude, is to occupy absorbingly his mind on each in succession, during the space of the rising and setting of seven suns. . . . It professes, like the Koran, to be a revelation. 'The Book of Exercises,' says a Jesuit, 'was truly written by the finger of God, and delivered to Ignatius by the Holy Mother of God.'"*

first, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars upon her head, travailing in birth; and then, a great red Dragon standing before her, ready to devour her child as soon as it should be born. The woman thus seen invested with all the symbols of authority is neither the Church nor Mary, but Israel, viewed from the standpoint of Divine counsels; for the proper calling of the nation is to govern and lead the peoples of the earth.

And now a "great sign" appears in heaven, "a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and in pain to be delivered."

The sign appears in heaven, not because the woman is actually there, — plainly she is not, — but because she is seen according to the mind of God toward her. Who the woman is should be quite plain, as the child she brings forth is One who is to rule all nations with a rod of iron. That is Christ assuredly; and the mother of Christ here is not the virgin, as we see clearly by what follows, although His virgin-birth, in its recall of the first prophecy, gives form to what we have in the vision now. Still less is she the Church, of which in no sense is Christ born, but Israel, "of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came," says the apostle (Rom. 9:5). Thus she is seen clothed with the glory of the sun — that is, of Christ Himself as He will presently appear in supreme power as Sun of Righteousness (Mal. 4:2); for the sun is the ruler of the day. As a consequence, her glory of old, before the day-dawn, the reflected light of her typical system, is like the moon under her feet. Upon her head the crown of twelve stars speaks naturally of her twelve tribes, planets now around the central sun.