The Great Whore (Part 2)
About this sermon
In The Great Whore (Part 2), Pastor Dean Odle argues that Jesus Christ is sufficient as Savior, high priest, intercessor, and the one mediator between God and humanity. Beginning with his own struggle, weakness, and need for grace, he contrasts biblical faith in Christ's blood with religious systems that, in his view, place Mary, saints, priests, sacraments, images, relics, or church tradition between the believer and Christ. First Timothy 2:5-6, Romans 3 and 5, Exodus 20, and Colossians 2 form the message's principal biblical foundation.
Chronological teaching outline
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Odle opens in prayer by confessing that Christ alone is the believer's high priest and intercessor. He then speaks candidly about a prolonged period of grief, illness, depression, and spiritual opposition. That personal admission frames his doctrinal point: no Christian is a flawless spiritual hero. Using Paul's struggle in Romans 7 and the universal guilt described in Romans 3, he distinguishes between pursuing sin and fighting sin, falling, repenting, and continuing to follow Christ. Human righteousness cannot bear the weight of salvation; confidence must rest in Jesus Christ and His blood.
Reading 1 Timothy 2, Odle emphasizes the word 'one': Christ Jesus is the sole mediator between God and humanity and gave Himself as the ransom. He contrasts that declaration with Catholic titles for Mary such as co-redemptrix and mediatrix of all graces. He argues that describing Mary as the channel of saving grace assigns her a role Scripture reserves for Christ and the Holy Spirit. His recurring conclusion is that believers need neither Mary nor the saints to gain access to God: Jesus is enough.
Odle reads the command against graven images and bowing before them, then compares it with photographs of Marian devotion and Catholic relic practices. He discusses the New Testament word commonly translated 'worship,' stressing acts such as bowing, kneeling, kissing in reverence, and prayer. He also recounts observations of Hindu offerings in Mauritius and references former-priest Charles Chiniquy's accounts of Catholic confession. These historical and institutional allegations are the speaker's claims and are retained for fidelity; they are not presented here as independently verified findings. Odle's central application is that no person, image, angel, saint, or relic should receive prayer or religious devotion.
From 1 Corinthians 5 and 6, Odle argues that idolatry cannot be treated as a harmless denominational difference. Paul commands discipline toward professing believers who persist in grave sin and warns that the unrighteous will not inherit God's kingdom. Yet the passage also proclaims cleansing, sanctification, and justification in the name of Jesus and by the Spirit of God. The sermon uses this contrast to call people out of idolatrous practice and into repentance and life in Christ.
Romans 3 and 5 supply the sermon’s positive gospel center. Odle reads that God's righteousness is received through faith in Jesus Christ, that sinners are justified freely by God's grace through Christ's redemption, and that Christ is the propitiation through faith in His blood. He then follows Paul's argument into peace with God, access into grace, the Spirit's work in the heart, Christ's death for sinners, justification by His blood, reconciliation, and atonement. He presents the Old Testament sacrificial pattern as preparation for Christ's final atoning work.
In a sustained reading of Colossians 2, Odle urges believers to continue in Christ the same way they received Him: by faith. He connects honest confession and forgiveness with walking in Christ, then highlights Paul's warning against philosophy, vain deceit, human tradition, elemental ordinances, angel worship, self-imposed humility, and religious rules. Because the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Christ and believers are complete in Him, Odle argues that external ritual cannot regenerate or save. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are acts of obedience and witness, not substitutes for Christ.
Odle rejects purgatory as an unbiblical doctrine and condemns the historic practice he describes of paying for masses on behalf of the dead. He illustrates his criticism with a story attributed to Chiniquy's Fifty Years in the Church of Rome. The editorial package does not independently verify that account; it records how the speaker uses it. Odle then summarizes his responsibility as a pastor: not to appear perfect, but to point people to Christ's blood, resurrection, and redemption so that they follow Jesus rather than a man, church, denomination, or pope.
As the teaching transitions into ministry, Odle briefly defends women serving and speaking in the church, citing the participation of all believers, the promise that sons and daughters would prophesy, unity in Christ, women named in Romans 16, and the women who first announced the resurrection. He then invites those needing physical, emotional, or spiritual healing to receive prayer and anointing. He explicitly denies possessing healing power himself and asks Jesus to heal through the church's obedient prayer.
The service enters an extended period of worship, laying on of hands, and prayer. The songs and spoken exhortations return to the sermon's theme of Christ's sufficiency: the congregation seeks Jesus Himself rather than ritual, performance, or merely temporal blessing. Extended third-party song lyrics are not reproduced in the transcript resource; the interval is identified so viewers can locate it in the recording.
Pastor Troy responds to Odle's opening transparency by recalling Moses' companions holding up his hands during battle. Several men gather around Odle and pray for strength, healing, protection, renewed joy, and courage for him and Pastor Nancy. Odle thanks the congregation, asks them to keep praying for spiritual leaders, and reiterates the church's commitment to follow Jesus according to Scripture. Brief service announcements close the recording.
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Substantially word-for-word transcript based on the user-supplied YouTube transcript, lightly edited for readability. Filler, stutters, repeated words, and obvious caption errors were corrected. Extended third-party worship-song lyrics were omitted and labeled; indistinct altar-ministry audio in that interval was consolidated.
- 00:00
[music] Thank you, Lord Jesus. Lord, we thank you. We come to you this morning and [music] we give thanks and we give praise. Lord, we know [music] we can't do it on our own or in our own strength. There's no way, God. We look to you, but I just want to say this morning, [music] Lord, that you are enough. Yes, we don't need Mary. We don't need to pray to saints or angels. We don't need a priest. You are our high priest. We don't need saints interceding [music] for us. You are our intercessor. And Lord, we know that there is [music] nothing good in our flesh, Lord. It's only through your righteousness that we [music] can be righteous. We are grateful for that today in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Hallelujah. You may be seated. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Lord. I have I tell you what, I'm just going to tell y'all. I'm not going to go into details, but probably the last five years since 21, I have personally been in one of the darkest, deepest trials of my life that I cannot even explain to you. Okay? And I kind of have not shared that I thought back, you know, in 2001 when I went through a divorce and losing everything, I thought that was bad. I lost my home, my church, my job, my income. Lost everything. I thought that was bad. But I'm going to tell you, the devil has been working against me personally. Like I don't think in all the nearly 40 years of walk with him that I have gone through such a dark period. I I go back to 21 with COVID, my sister dying, health issues that I've had. and I just going to let y'all know, I'm just going to say this plainly. I I am in a fight personally and have been for about 5 years now with death, just so you know.
- 03:00
And some of the darkest just I I don't know, feeling of God being a million miles away that you can walk through. And I just keep getting up and keep going. And so without getting into any details, but it gets ex especially heavy spiritually, the attacks, the oppression of the enemy when I get on a topic like the whore of Babylon, when I start exposing probably the biggest deception in our world, that counterfeit Christianity of Roman Catholicism. man does it just the demons come out of the woodwork. It is truly, you know, it says in Revelation 18 that it Rome, the mystery Babylon, the great whore is the habitation of devils and every unclean and, you know, evil spirit and boy, it does not like you exposing it. but today I just want to tell you this is part two and just let y'all know I need your prayers like never before. but I want us to go to this go to first Timothy. We're going to start here and I've just called this the great whore, part two. You can put the title page up. debated all the way up until church whether I was going to do this or not today. but I feel like I'm supposed to because let me say to you that, you know, Paul made this statement. He didn't want anyone to think more highly of him than they ought to think. And I want to just assure you, I know there are a lot of people that look at me like I'm some super spiritual Christian, and I'm not. I'm just a human being, okay? And I go through the attacks, the darkness, the frustration, the depression, the feelings of, you know, I go through it all. I go through every bit of it. that you do. Nobody, again, we're not, there's no super-Christians, okay? The Pope's not one. The priests aren't one, you know, Mary. No, there's no super-Christians. And Paul even made this statement as I'm going to share this with you and I'm trying to explain before I go into all this, but you know Paul was a dedicated Christian. He was so dedicated to Jesus that he said in first Timothy chapter 1, he said that the Lord had made him a pattern or an example to follow for all Christians. He said follow me as I follow Christ. Right?
- 06:00
we can read a lot about his life in the book of Acts and through his epistles. We see some of the great great things he did. But even Paul, I thank God for his honesty when he said in Romans 7, even though I want to do what I what I ought to do, he said, I don't do that sometimes. Well, I don't do what I should do as a Christian. And he said, and then there are things I don't want to do that I do. And he said, 'I find this war going on in me that with my mind I desire to do the will of God and what pleases God, but the flesh does not want to do that. And then he said this as a Christian, he said, I know that in my flesh dwells no good thing and that when I would do good, evil is present with me. And when we say the scripture, you know, we quote it from the Psalms and then in course of Romans 3 that there is none that doeth good, know not one. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Do you know that when it says all have sinned, do you know it means all are continue to sin and fall short of the glory of God. I sin and fall short of the glory of God. You sin and fall short of the glory of God. and we should hate sin and we should repent and we should try not to live in it. But the fact is even when we hate sin and try to not commit sin and try to live holy and righteous with all of our strength, might and determination, we still fall short. Which is why when we know this, and I tell you, I'm telling you this as a Christian. I know there's Christians out there that think they can become somehow per perfect. No, you can't. You are liars. All right. Paul after years of walking with Jesus said, "I do things I don't want to do. There's things I should do, I don't do. I fall short." He was admitting it. Now, he was saying, he went on to say that was Romans 7. Romans 8, he said, "But I'm not walking after the flesh. I'm not chasing after it. I don't want to live in the carnal nature, the sins of the flesh. And so that's the difference. There's some people that want to live in it and still go to heaven. The rest of us know we are fighting against it, struggling against it, and still trip and fall over it, but we get up and keep fighting against it and hate it and want to be different. And there is none of us Christians that escape this struggle with sin, temptation, addictions, anger, offense. I mean, I had a personally I had a meltdown this week. You ever had a meltdown? Pastor Dean had a meltdown and it was about between me and him. I'm upset about some things.
- 09:00
All I see is sin and evil and death and horrible this horrible world we live in. I get sick of it sometimes. I get sick of it staining my mind. Like it said about Lot that living in Sodom, it says his righteous soul was vexed day to day just because he had to live around it. We are influenced and pushed constantly to give in to thoughts or evil or and I mean in all the forms hatred or bitterness or whatever unforgiveness or divorce I mean we are just pushed all the time to sin sin and so and what's so bad is half of us this part you see wants to do it. And so what I'm going to tell you right now is that you're going to have this struggle with sin and temptation and evil and your yourself wanting to do it and maybe sometimes doing it. You're going to have this struggle. But what you have to decide is what is your faith going to be in? What are you trusting in your ability to live holy and obedient and righteousness or in the blood of Jesus Christ? Or is it in I got to take the wafer then I'm good? Let me tell you something. You can take the wafer. You can drink the grape juice. You can put on a choir robe. You can be baptized 500 times. You can put a veil over your head. You could do all these outward little traps, still be mean, lustful little devils. All this external stuff of Christianity does not make you righteous. One thing, somebody say one thing. faith in the blood of Jesus Christ. I have no righteousness of my own. And if I think I do, it's filthy rags. And so what I have to look to when I am a miserable failure, when I'm trying not to be, is to realize I know I'm supposed to try to do it, but I can't do it no matter how much I try.
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