In the year 110 A.D., not even fifteen years after the book of Revelation was written, while on his way to execution St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote: “Where the bishop is present, there let the congregation gather, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church”. The Church believes that when the bishops speak as teachers, Christ speaks; for he said to them: “He who hears you, hears me; and he who rejects you, rejects me” (Lk 10, 16).
Mat 7:15 “Beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves.
Act_20:29 I know that false teachers, like vicious wolves, will come in among you after I leave, not sparing the flock.
So now what do you do? How do you test the truth if we are warned there are false prophets and leaders?
This is typical shallow Bible Christianity since this is all such Bible Christians can do. Toss out swatches of scriptural quotations and purport to apply a definite interpretation to them that would contradict Catholic Belief. Hence the saying that even the devil can quote scripture.
You have answered your own question: “So now what do you do? How do you test the truth if we are warned there are false prophets and leaders?”
BEFORE the Bible, there existed the Catholic Church. How many times must you be reminded hat it was the Catholic Church in the Synod of Rome in AD 382, at least some two hundred or more years after the last Gospel was written, that the Church fathers acting under infallible Petrine examined hundreds of fragments of writings, interpreted and cross-checked them against the received oral tradition (John 21:25: that Christ did and said many things that were not written down and had they been written down it would not fill all the books in the world), and included some, and excluded other written tracts, like the Gbostic gospels, prayed as a community of disciples following the successors to St. Peter, and declared the canonical text to be the written Word of God.
This is the true Church, all the rest are crude heresies. This infallible authority given to Peter and his successors “to teach” and teach ONE truth was given to the Catholic Church. Protestantism and all its heresies washed ashore some ELEVEN centuries later.
This Church is the “rock” for all ages, and its saints and martyrs and stigmatists attest to all of this.
Theological scholars both from the vast array of Catholics theologians to several pre-eminent Protestant theologians now recognize this singular fact and embrace all of its doctrine and beliefs stated in the Credo and the Catholic Catechism. Just think of the superb analyses made by John Hnery Newman, after the whole the so-called Oxford Movement is called.
Speaking of false prophets you don’t have to go far. Just as we find the Moonies, the vapid bible waving lectures of Billy Graham, Benny Hinn, Jimmy Swaggart, Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, TD Jakes, and Rev. Wright, we now have mainline Protestant and Evangelical Churches using scriptural warrant toordain married gay and lesbian ministers. These and your foursquare Church First Methodist, First AME, First Presbyterian, First -—etc, etc., are for low information shallow Bible Christians.
Serious inquiring minds find Protestantism today an embarrassment. This is why scores of Protestant “divinity school” students complete their studies and then switch over to Catholicism, professors included.
Protestants should at least concede a point which Martin Luther, their religion’s founder, also conceded, namely, that the Catholic Church safeguarded and identified the Bible: He wrote: “We are obliged to yield many things to the Catholics – (for example), that they possess the Word of God, which we received from them; otherwise, we should have known nothing at all about it.”
Thus this infallible authority teach and interpret did not vanish with the Protestant Reformation.
That infallibility and the authority to teach ONE truth as Christ commanded in His Great Commission to “go Forth and TEACH all nations” This is to teach ONE truth and assured to Peter:
“And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.”
The Catholic Church “bound” the Bible in AD 382 and “bound” it followers with the same infallible teaching authority that informed its selection of the canonical texts.
Thus the early Church historian J. N. D. Kelly, a Protestant, writes,
“[W]here in practice was [the] apostolic testimony or tradition to be found? . The most obvious answer was that the apostles had committed it orally to the Church, where it had been handed down from generation to generation... Unlike the alleged secret tradition of the Gnostics, it was entirely public and open, having been entrusted by the apostles to their successors, and by these in turn to those who followed them, and was visible in the Church for all who cared to look for it” (Early Christian Doctrines, 37).
Even before the Bible was assembled, St. Irenaeus writes:
“It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about” (Against Heresies 3:3:1 [A.D. 189]).
Unfortunately this is not the stuff that shallow Bible Christians have even been exposed to. This is why it has been often said that take a Bible Christian to the deep end of the theological pool and either they drown or stay afloat by holding onto the Catholic raft.
Jesus said his Church would be “the light of the world.’ He then noted that “a city set on a hill cannot be hid” (Matt. 5:14).
The Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) that we find a definitive list of canonical books being drawn up, and each of these Councils acknowledged the very same list of books deemed the infallible written word of God in the Synod f AD 382.
That authority did not suddenly evaporate.
This means his Church is a visible organization. It must have characteristics that clearly identify it and that distinguish it from other churches. Jesus promised, “I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). This means that his Church will never be destroyed and will never fall away from him. His Church will survive until his return.
quoted TO Catholics, sounds like an absolutely PERFECT depiction of protestantism.........PERFECT