I believe that the Catholic Church is the false church in the last day. For instance,
the Bible says in Daniel chapter 9 that the false church will seek to change
times and laws. So when I look at your Ten Commandments, I see you've
taken commandment number two, that talks about graven images, you've taken it off completely;
and then you've taken commandment number nine which says "Thou shalt not covet," and made that
into two commandments. That's a sign that this church has messed with God's Ten Commandments.
Well Julian, lemme just ask you this: where are you getting the Ten Commandments? You're
not getting them from the Bible, are you? Where are you getting them from? Well,
say for instance, your commandment number four, you say it is "Thou shall honor thy mother and
thy father." The Ten Commandments within the King James Version, commandment number four is
to "Remember the sabbath day." Okay? And then commandment number five is to "Honor mother and
your father." But Julian, my question is where you're getting your Ten Commandments. Are you
getting them from the book of Exodus, the book of Deuteronomy, or somewhere else? Because there's a
different listing. Because there's not a—there's no bullet points in the Bible. That's all I'm
getting at. I'm going to let Karlo address your question, but do you want to tell me where you got
the Ten Commandments, Julian? Well, I read it from Deuteronomy, I also read it from Exodus chapter
20. Okay, fair enough. Thank you, Julian. Yeah, so Julian, thank you very much for your question,
and we do appreciate it. So my first thought is: you appealed to Daniel chapter nine,
and I don't have the passage in front of me, so I'm assuming what you're saying is there in
Daniel chapter 9 concerning the changing of God's laws. All right. Well, what kind of laws are we
talking about here? Because if you're going to say that "If a church changes God's laws, well then
it will be the false church spoken of in Daniel 9," well, if that's the case, you're going to
have to reject first-century Christianity, brother. Because the first-century Christians
didn't hold fast to the Old Testament laws—the ceremonial precepts, that is. So laws can change,
and we see that in salvation history. Saint Paul himself tells us in Colossians 2:16: "Don't let
anyone pass judgment on you, whether food or drink, festivals or sabbaths, or new moons," etc.
So laws can change. So the question is: well, which kind of laws? Well, if we're talking
about moral laws like you've brought up, Julian, the Ten Commandments, my first point is this:
the Catholic Church has not changed any moral laws. We still affirm the moral laws
that are revealed to us (and that we can know by reason alone) in Exodus chapter 20 and Deuteronomy
chapter 5. These are all laws that God gives to the Israelites that flow from our human nature.
The Catholic Church has not abrogated any of those laws. The Catholic Church 100 percent
says "You better follow them." In fact, Julian, the Catholic Church teaches that if we break
these Ten Commandments, if we do not uphold these Ten Commandments, then we cannot inherit
eternal life at the end of time. We affirm what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 19 when
the rich young man asked him "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" and Jesus Christ says
"Keep the commandments." What you're bringing up is not a matter of changing laws. So I
want to be very clear about that. That's not what's at issue here. What's that issue is the
enumeration of these laws and how we're going to categorize them. Now concerning the enumeration,
there are a variety of ways of listing the Ten Commandments, Julian.The Catholic Church has
adopted the enumeration of St. Augustine. Even Lutheran confessions adopt this enumeration,
you have a different enumeration among some of the Greek fathers, you have a different
enumeration in Greek and Orthodox churches as well as reformed communities; so there are a
variety of ways of listing and categorizing the Ten Commandments. Now concerning the justification
for the Catholic enumeration, you brought up commandments two and nine. So for us as Catholics,
we...for you and according to your enumeration, commandment number two is "Thou shalt not make
graven images." We as Catholics, Julian, do not see that prohibition of making graven images as
a distinct commandment, because it falls under the first commandment of having no false gods. Because
immediately after God says "Do not make graven images," he says in verse 5 "You shall not bow
down to them or serve them." And that falls under the very first statement "You shall have no false
gods before me." And so that's why we as cCtholics do not see "Thou shalt not make graven images"
as a distinct commandment. It is a commandment, right? Because "graven images" in Hebrew there,
"pesel" is the word, it is used elsewhere in the Hebrew scriptures for "idols." In other words,
God's simply saying "Don't make idols." Yeah. Well, that's the same commandment,
in essence, as "Don't have false gods." And so we as Catholics see the the prohibition of making
idols as part of the first commandment. Now concerning your commandment nine,
"Thou shalt not covet," we as Catholics make a distinction between the material
goods of this life, that we shall not covet of our neighbor, and our neighbor's wife. Because
whenever you read the scriptures, Julian, there is a distinction that's made between coveting goods
and coveting your neighbor's wife. Well, we as Catholics do not consider our neighbor's wife as
on the same level as material goods that our neighbor will have. We see a distinction between
the two, and that's why we draw a distinction between two distinct commandments in essence:
coveting our neighbors material stuff or goods, and then coveting our neighbor's wife.
Those are two distinct sins in essence, right? You know, coveting our neighbor's wife, that's lust,
as Jesus teaches us in Matthew 5:27-28; coveting our neighbor's goods is going to involve envy,
but it's an essentially different sin because our neighbor's wife is not the same kind of good
as our neighbor's material stuff. So that's what would have to say in response to that.