Posted on 05/25/2016 3:57:03 AM PDT by JosephJames
Yes, exactly, Elsie. Exactly! Because Christ is the founder and Bridegroom of His Church, and abides with Her always.
Your argument makes no sense. In a religion forum we use the Bible to support our cause. You wish to discredit my case by limiting me to discreditable sources to advance your false assertion. You are changing the rules to suit yourself. Why would I quote Grimms Fairy Tales in a religious forum? Why start an argument with a false premise? I see no point.
What is the source of these 15 man-made false promises, Grimms Fairy Tales? For the most part, they are incongruent with the Bible.
But with that caveat (forgive me, all for my limitations) and responding to perspective of what you said ---
I would venture that what you said is true in its way, --- surprise, true in its way ---but you're looking at it sideways, one-eyed, and with a squint.
The biggest difference between Protestants and Catholics is that Protestants want to make God's choice of elevating man, irrelevant. If and when they are doing this, Protestants are not fully acknowledging God's sovereign plan of saving man through Man, through the Son of Man who embodies, sums up Humanity as the Image and Likeness of God.
In the Bible, the messenger is never irrelevant. In fact, the messenger is part of the Message. The message is from God, and so is the messenger, the one called and prepared by God. Each one plays a part, and a morally serious, necessary part.
What the messenger says and does, has consequences. What the messenger says and does, makes the decisive difference. The messenger's human words--- although inspired by God --- are really the messenger's words, as well, and they really matter.
The messenger's choices matter. His or her fidelity to God matters. His very person matters, because God has decided to save us, not as one saves paper clips or dryer lint or string, but as one saves a man whose intelligent cooperation matters. "I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is about. I call you friends."
Catholics say "Man matters. Matter matters."
Protestants say (and this is a too-broad generalization, but for the rhetorical purposes at hand I'll go on)--- you say "Man doesn't matter, and matter doesn't matter." Protestants have not yet grasped the full significance of the Incarnation.
But who has?
"In the birth of Jesus, Mary is not the focus, but our Redeemer is."
Yews, indeed. Yet there is another way of looking at it, because the one way does not exclude the other. In fact God takes up Mary's humanity by making it the "matter" of the Incarnation.
The humble handmaid Mary, in her lowliness, says "He Who is mighty has done great things for me," and "All generations will call me blessed." She doesn't say, "All generations will call me nothing."
You see, it is the Source of the message AND the tool used to deliver that message, and that theme is consistent throughout the Bible. God raises up the lowly, and they become true cooperators with Him. That is the whole of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.
Romans 9:21 says we are the clay and God is the potter.
Very true. Blessed be God. And 2 Peter 1:4 says, "Through these [promises] you come to share in the Divine Nature, after escaping from corruption in the world that comes from evil desire."
John says, "We are God's children now." (Does this not go beyond being His clay pots, His tools or even His servants? --- not because we are great, but because He who is mighty has done great things for us). "What we shall be has not yet been revealed..." Imagine that. No, we can't even imagine.
Look at what we now know about glory:
Romans 8:17
"...and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him."Romans 2:10
"There will be glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does good, Jew first and then Greek."Romans 8:21
["We know] that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God."Romans 9:4
"They are Israelites; theirs the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises...Romans 8:30
"And those he predestined he also called; and those he called he also justified; and those he justified he also glorified."Romans 9:23
"This was to make known the riches of his glory to the vessels of mercy, which he has previously prepared for glory...
"Let the glory be to God. Amen."
Amen.
The whole concept of a pope is a human invention having nothing to do with the Word of God so there are no surprises in what ensues.
Bingo! Exactly! That is one of the great themes of Catholic Marian spirituality: we can be blessed as well.
"I really believe if Mary were here today she would tell Catholics to immediately stop what they are doing on her behalf and re-direct your efforts to Jesus and Him alone."
True in its way: Mary's great witness is always "Do whatever He tells you." She says just that, in differently-worded variations in all of he visitations to us on earth, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries. (Yes, these are "Private" Revelations, even when seen by 70,000, as at Fatima; and no, we don't have to believe in them: they are not part of what must be believed in faith.)
But it's significant that in the best-attested apparitions (and there have been only a few) this is her theme: know God, love Him and serve Him.
But neither she nor her Son have told us that she is not to be honored, that she is not honorable. He loves her, and HE honors her. I am sure it gives Him pleasure when we do, too.
The opposite of that is just inconceivable. Can anyone think Jesus would say of his sweet and lovable Mother, this lady full of grace, "Stop honoring her! She's nothing special!"
As for her, she will forever point to the Trinity whom she adores.
. I am sure it gives Him pleasure when we do, too.
And I am just as sure that it does not. Not the way Catholics do it. There is NO example in the Bible of Marian obsession. None. Nobody praying to her. (Who thought that up anyway?) It is a mis-directed effort, I'm sorry.
There is an infinite difference. You speak of things you do not understand.
We are INSTRUCTED to honor others. "Render custom to whom custom is due. Respect to whom respect is due. Honor to whom honor is due." Look, even on an ordinary level of a lackluster person like myself, I can be touched to the point of tears if someone speaks well of my mother (who died in 1994.)
Jesus is a much better person than I am. I can hardly think he would be less than MAGNIFICENT in the honors He would give His mother, or the praises He would be pleased to hear of her.
The kind of person she is, she gives it all back to God. Isn't this what Heaven is like? The overflowing love of all for all, at the Table of His Love?
And what a precious verse this is:
2 Corinthians 3:18
All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit.
What's the proper response? "Everyone except Mary"?
The proper response is "Amen."
How can love for someone whom God chose above all others, whom God sanctified, to whom God joined Himself, with whom God lived intimately, and whom God loves, be displeasing to God?
So the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts?
Ok...
Apparitions and visitations...
This is IT???
What a waste of her time!
Then how do YOU explain the 15 promises?
Absolutely. I’m proud of you!
Oh?
Where did YOU get the AUTHORITY to proclaim such a thing?
How can statues about, prayers to, and intercession called for by someone whom God chose above all others, whom God sanctified, to whom God joined Himself, with whom God lived intimately, and whom God loves, be displeasing to God?
whom God sanctified
He sanctifies everybody that believes on Jesus
to whom God joined Himself
She was called for a special task to be sure
with whom God lived intimately
Don't forget Joseph and Jesus' half brothers
and whom God loves
Doesn't God love everybody?
be displeasing to God
Carrying anything to an extreme can be displeasing to God. I would say praying to Mary is un-Biblical and displeasing to God.
My first realization would be that it's a demonic delusion. God says mothers are worth of "honor" (that's in the 10 Commandments: that same set of Commandments that says to adore God alone.) St. Paul says "Honor those to whom honor is due." Satan says "Do not honor."
A man who said, "You respect my mother too much. Don't go on and on like that about loving her, there's nothing special about her," -- I not only wouldn't think he was God, I wouldn't even think he was a very good man.
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