Posted on 11/28/2014 2:33:31 PM PST by NYer
It was the day after Ash Wednesday in 2012 when I called my mom from my dorm room at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and told her I thought I was going to become Catholic.
“You’re not going to become Catholic, you just know you’re not Southern Baptist,” she said.
“No, I don’t think so.”
A pause. “Oh boy,” she sighed.
I started crying.
I cannot stress enough how much I hated the idea of becoming Catholic. I was bargaining to the last moment. I submitted a sermon for a competition days before withdrawing from school. I was memorizing Psalm 119 to convince myself of sola scriptura. I set up meetings with professors to hear the best arguments. I purposefully read Protestant books about Catholicism, rather than books by Catholic authors.
Further, I knew I would lose my housing money and have to pay a scholarship back if I withdrew from school, not to mention disappointing family, friends, and a dedicated church community.
But when I attempted to do my homework, I collapsed on my bed. All I wanted to do was scream at the textbook, “Who says?!”
I had experienced a huge paradigm shift in my thinking about the faith, and the question of apostolic authority loomed larger than ever.
But let’s rewind back a few years.
I grew up in an evangelical Protestant home. My father was a worship and preaching pastor from when I was in fourth grade onwards. Midway through college, I really fell in love with Jesus Christ and His precious Gospel and decided to become a pastor.
It was during that time that I was hardened in my assumption that the Roman Catholic Church didn’t adhere to the Bible. When I asked one pastor friend of mine during my junior year why Catholics thought Mary remained a virgin after Jesus’ birth when the Bible clearly said Jesus had “brothers,” he simply grimaced: “They don’t read the Bible.”
Though I had been in talks with Seattle’s Mars Hill Church about doing an internship with them, John Piper’s book Don’t Waste Your Life clarified my call to missionary work specifically, and I spent the next summer evangelizing Catholics in Poland.
So I was surprised when I visited my parents and found a silly looking book titled Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic on my father’s desk. What was my dad doing reading something like this? I was curious and hadn’t brought anything home to read, so I gave it a look.
David Currie’s memoir of leaving behind his evangelical education and ministries was bothersome. His unapologetic defense of controversial doctrines regarding Mary and the papacy were most shocking, as I had never seriously considered that Catholics would have sensible, scriptural defenses to these beliefs.
The book’s presence on my father’s desk was explained more fully a few months later when he called me and said he was returning to the Catholicism of his youth. My response? “But, can’t you just be Lutheran or something?” I felt angry, betrayed, and indignant. For the next four months I served as a youth pastor at my local church and, in my free time, read up on why Catholicism was wrong.
During that time, I stumbled across a Christianity Today article that depicted an “evangelical identity crisis.” The author painted a picture of young evangelicals, growing up in a post-modern world, yearning to be firmly rooted in history and encouraged that others had stood strong for Christ in changing and troubled times. Yet, in my experience, most evangelical churches did not observe the liturgical calendar, the Apostles’ Creed was never mentioned, many of the songs were written after 1997, and if any anecdotal story was told about a hero from church history, it was certainly from after the Reformation. Most of Christian history was nowhere to be found.
For the first time, I panicked. I found a copy of the Catechism and started leafing through it, finding the most controversial doctrines and laughing at the silliness of the Catholic Church. Indulgences? Papal infallibility? These things, so obviously wrong, reassured me in my Protestantism. The Mass sounded beautiful and the idea of a visible, unified Church was appealing - but at the expense of the Gospel? It seemed obvious that Satan would build a large organization that would lead so many just short of heaven.
I shook off most of the doubts and enjoyed the remainder of my time at college, having fun with the youth group and sharing my faith with the students. Any lingering doubts, I assumed, would be dealt with in seminary.
I started my classes in January with the excitement of a die-hard football fan going to the Super Bowl. The classes were fantastic and I thought I had finally rid myself of any Catholic problems.
Nor the ongoing cover up of molestation that has been occurring for who knows how long.
Acts 15:29 That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well.
That is NOT Old Testament or Mosaic Law. It hasn't been superseded or obsolete under the new covenant. And please don't come back with that lame comment about the blood being from animals sacrificed. It says and from blood, not and their blood.
But Catholics insist it IS the flesh. The Catholic Church teaches only part of what Jesus says just like Satan misquoted scripture. That should be a hint to those who choose to follow that apostate organization.
Back attcha!
Forget the blood, the other day I ALMOST ate some bread that had the leaven of the Pharisees in it. That’s a big no-no there.
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With that kind of reasoning, there would be "NO way any group with men like this [see below] would be allowed to be in charge of starting the Church of Jesus Christ (also called His body, and which He was the Head of - Colossians 1:18), or of writing the New Testament, the Holy Written Word of God.
(All of these guys who wrote the "books" of the New Testament or who helped to begin and build the Catholic Church of Jesus Christ, were sinners.)
(By the way, Jesus allowed Judas Iscariot to stay in His closest group for most of His public ministry, right up till the end, even though Jesus knew Judas was a wicked thief and betrayer.)
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CynicalBear, your claim sounds exactly like the same one the Jehovah's Witnesses often make and like to ask Catholics about, and I think it will be very helpful to you to read the response given to their similar claim and question by the staff of "Catholic Answers" at this link and shown below:
Now I'll say goodnight to everyone, and may God bless all of us with greater and clearer understanding of all His revealed truths.------------------------------------------------------------
Is Jesus' command to drink his blood a violation of God's law?
Full Question
Jehovah's Witnesses told me that Jesus' commands to eat his flesh and drink his blood in John 6 could not be literal because Jesus would be advocating something against God's law by commanding us to eat blood (cf. Gen. 9:4, Acts 15:28-29). What can I say to this?
Answer
You can say four things. First, any divine command that comes later modifies divine commands that came earlier. When Jesus declared all foods clean (Mk 7:19), his command superseded the earlier command that certain foods be regarded as unclean (Lv 11:1-8). If Jesus today commands us to drink his blood, his command supersedes any prior command concerning drinking blood.
Second, the command against drinking blood, like all of the Old Testament dietary regulations, has passed away, for "These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink" (Col 2:17, 16).
The mention of not eating blood in Acts 15:20, 29 was a pastoral provision suggested by James to keep Jews from being scandalized by the conduct of Gentile Christians. We know that these pastoral provisions were only temporary. One concerned abstaining from idol meat, yet later Paul says eating idol meat is okay so long as it doesn't scandalize others (Rom 14:1-14, 1 Cor 8:1-13).
If it is objected that blood is not a food (though it is in some cultures), note that Jesus was asked (Mk 7:5) why his disciples ate with unwashed hands. He replied, "Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him unclean? For it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body" (7:18-19). In context this refers to a non-food substance (the dirt on one's unwashed hands).
Third, the Old Testament is very specific about why one was not to eat blood: "The life of every creature is the blood of it; therefore I have said to the people of Israel, You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood" (Lv 17:14, cf. Dt 12:23). The Israelites could not eat animal blood because it contained the animal's life, but there is one Person whose life you must have in you, "Christ who is your life" (Col 3:4).
Finally, even if the Jehovah's Witnesses were right that drinking blood were intrinsically evil instead of the subject of a temporary prohibition, they would still have problems with John 6 because, in their interpretation, Jesus would be commanding us to eat his flesh symbolically and to drink his blood symbolically. He would be commanding us to act out symbolically an intrinsically evil deed as part of a sacred worship service. But this leads us to a ludicrous conclusion, so it must be that drinking Christ's blood is permissible (not to say desirable).
Answered by: Catholic Answers Staff
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This is your post I replied to
To: delchiante
You and I agree..
Actually, probably not as I think you belong to one of the many Protestant cults.
338 posted on Sat Nov 29 2014 23:23:53 GMT-0600 (CST) by af_vet_1981 (The bus came by and I got on, That’s when it all began.)
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You can clarify which many Protestants are cults if you want...
We can explain it to you, we just can't understand it for you.
God is omnipotent. He thinks or says something and it happens.
How do YOU explain 3 persons with one divine nature that is still one God? How do YOU explain one person (Jesus) with two natures, One divine, one human, that are in full accord?
One you (protestants) accept that God is omnipotent, and I mean really accept, not just pay it lip service, the scales will fall from them your and eyes will be opened.
"Get thee behind me, Satan."
You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?
Matthew 23:33
Your pope is impotent.
He can't say or think anything without at least half of you Catholics complaining about it!
Seems like you ALL want to be pope!
Let's try some easy math:
There are approximately 1.2 billion Catholics world wide;
If merely 1% of them 'ask' Mary for help just once each day;
that means that 12 million separate prayers are headed Mary's direction every day.
Given that there are 86,400 seconds per day... (24 hours times 60 minutes times 60 seconds)
...that means that Mary has to handle approximately 139 'requests' per second!
Purty good fer someone NOT 'devine'!
You're getting it!
No organization, or denomination is the body of Christ.
The body of Christ is a spiritual body comprised of all born again believers throughout the church age, encompassing 2,000 and the entire world.
It is not located in one geographical place, headquartered anywhere, run by anyone.
There is the body of Christ in every denomination and there are tares in every denomination because the body of Christ is PEOPLE making an organism, not an organization.
BTW, if you're going to address what someone said, please have the courtesy to represent what they said correctly.
What you seemed to claim is my reasoning, this statement, which is not and I did not even imply it, and started with the quotation marks was not what I said. What I said was this No way any organization with men like this allowed to be in charge is the actual body of Christ.
What you stated here With that kind of reasoning, there would be "NO way any group with men like this [see below] would be allowed to be in charge of starting the Church of Jesus Christ (also called His body, and which He was the Head of - Colossians 1:18), or of writing the New Testament, the Holy Written Word of God. is NOT *my kind of reasoning.
Are you also equating the men who started the body of Christ, the writers of the gospels, are peers with those men of debauchery whom you guys own as popes?
There are some 30,000 plus denominations, sects, and cults derived from the main Protestant denominations (Lutheran, Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, etc.). Rebellion breeds rebels and Protestantism continues to calve new sects and movements each year. Many of these are cults. They have no root in themselves. They don't regard their parent denomination as competely genuine or legitimate and yearn to restore some branch of Christianity that they think will be.
Many of the nonCatholics posting refuse to disclose their affiliation while they attack Catholics, which is hypocrisy. You, and a few others, are not ashamed of your affiliation. In the apologetics list I posted there are many examples of cults, among them Adventism and Sabbatarianism. Some examples of cults descended from Protestantism:
Have just read the post that started this thread again and then a third time. Even though the account may be factual to a large degree, something does not ring true about his testimony.
I think the author has left out some very key information that could change the impact of his story, which sounds like a revised college creative writing project, by virtue of the back and forth in time manner of telling.
Although the author’s religious background is evident, and even though he has experience several changes in his life direction, I found no evidence he has experienced the kind of second birth that Jesus said is a requirement and that he is now a believer in and follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone.
His story is sappy and lacks both conviction and persuasion.
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