Posted on 05/10/2017 9:03:36 AM PDT by Salvation
Continuing with the theme of urgency from yesterday’s post, we do well to consider Mary’s fervent requests at Fatima for prayer, conversion, and consecration. This Saturday will mark the 100th anniversary of Mary’s first appearance at Fatima.
It was a critical time in human history. The First World War had claimed more than 17 million lives. Mary urged prayer to end this catastrophe:
Thanks be to God, through the children’s prayers and surely those of others, the war did soon end. In October, Our Lady said,
War is a terrible result of human sinfulness as well as a punishment for it. Sin is its own punishment; when we sow the wind, we reap the whirlwind. Part of the horror of the First World War was the use of chemical weapons. So appalling was the suffering and so great was the loss of life that in 1925 most nations willingly signed the Geneva Protocol, which prohibited their use in international armed conflicts.
But Mother Mary urgently warned that if the people of this world did not repent, pray, and cease offending God, a war far worse would come:
Sadly, as we know, the Second World War formally ensued in 1939. Months earlier, in 1938, a remarkable display of the Aurora Borealis further south than ever observed made international headlines. It was a final warning. More than 60 million people died in World War II. Atrocities were multiplied, and the most fearsome weapon ever contrived—the atom bomb—would haunt the world long after the war. Russia, too, spread Marxist and atheist errors.
See what happens when we do heed the urgent request to pray? Wars can be ended, souls can be saved, and peace can be brought.
But also note the terrible consequences of failing to pray and be converted! Jesus once said to paralyzed man he had healed, See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you (John 5:14). So, too, for the people of that time who, though having received God’s mercies in the end of World War I, fell back into sin. The decadence, financial excess, and foolishness of the “roaring” 1920s, both in Europe and America, brought a harvest of corruption, both morally and politically. It ushered in both the Great Depression and then a war far worse than ever imagined.
Yes, prayer and conversion are both urgent and essential. This is true not only in terms of this world, but also of the world to come. This world’s travails are indeed awful, but they are temporary. Mother Mary sets far greater stakes before us: Heaven or Hell.
Where will you spend eternity? What about your children, siblings, and friends? Have you thought about this at all? Do you understand the urgency? Consider well some of what our Lady of Fatima said by way of an eternal warning:
Here is a mother urgently warning her children of the fires of hell, of the consequences of sin and the final refusal to repent. Here is a mother urgently calling for prayer, reparation, sacrifices, and conversion.
She is urgent; are we? To be urgent does not mean to be in a panic; it means to be sober and alert, to be persistent and consistent in attending to our final end and to that of others to the degree that we are able.
Caritas Christi urget nos: The Love of Christ urges us on! …. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God (2 Cor 5:14, 20).
Arthur, you're not seeing that He could have said to Satan, "I AM The Son of God. Shut up and leave." And that would have happened. But He took the opportunity to show that the authority of the Holy Writings which He had caused to be set down by Moses still overpowered in source, authority, reasoning, the faulty logic of the god of this world (2 Cor. 4:4). And one of the uses was to employ figurative-literal language and Koine grammar to illustrate a spiritual truth and its permanence.
But likewise, without tiring you with detail, in two more instances Jesus reprimands the Devil by elevating the Word that stands forever (perfect tense in the Koine) above His Own very present personal authority (Ps. 138:2), refuses to obey the Devil's wishes (as Satan's other unsaved children must), but commands him to leave the Lord's presence.
Jesus does this without reference to any of the religious entities then existent, that we might see by reading that it is the Holy Scriptures alone by which other religious (or falsely religious) endeavors must be judged.
Too bad it has to be explained to you. Your religion is not the Voice of Christ on Earth that it pretends to be, overriding even the God-inspired progressively revealed and comprehensive Completed Word that we have, which has been translated into many languages.
The method of transmission of paradoses preached in the churches have been without error only when they were written down by inspiration of the Holy Spirit at the time. They have not been effcyively and erroneously transmitted by oral tradition even in the time when the apostles were yet alive; most certainly not to our age through pious but uninspired fallible men.
TYhat is why Scripture Alone is reliable; traditional practices are not.
And we have records of written Scripture stretching far back and it has remained the same throughout history.
Whereas traditions are continually changing.
The way I explain it is partially the saying, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.”
Though in some cases I also encourage traditions as long as it’s properly understood that the traditions we carry out (such as, for example, Advent wreaths) serve the proclamation of the Word. And when they’re no longer in service to the Word or no longer useful, they should end.
Please cite the version you are quoting from.
Salvation is apart from works. Justification is apart from works. Primary sanctification is apart from works. Baptism in and indwelling of the Holy Spirit is apart from works.
These are all contingent upon one's commitment of total, unreserved, never-ceasing eternal trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, His faithfulness, His Blood, and His works that totally placate and satisfy The Mighty God's righteous well-deserved fiery wrath against the person's Sin and sinfulness; such that God The Father may extend the hand of fellowship, and impute the Righteousness of His Son to the account of the otherwise lost human at the moment that the person repents and accepts the transaction offered: My Son's Righteousness in exchange for the totality of your sins and guilt.
Going forward from that point, works acceptable to God are the evidence of Spirit-empowered and Spirit-led progressive sanctification of the new regenerated believer-disciple-priest and Friend of Christ, to and through the physical death of this human that God has graciously and freely saved on the basis of one's trust in The Christ His Son.
Such a person in this life is to expect persecution not only from Satan, his demons, and the existing world system, but also from unregenerated "believers" who think that a part of earning their way to Heaven is attempting to destroy the doctrine of salvation by faith alone in Christ alone, which plan would destroy the entire basis of their false religion and false christs, as well as the reliance of The Holy Writings as the supreme authority upon which the true believer's faith rests.
"But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain" (Titus 3:9 AV).
We may not find it just to escape such contentions, for we are asked to contend for The Faith once delivered to the Saints when a false Christ's flag is flown; but we can try to avoid name-calling and mud-slinging, eh? Let the Holy Spirit do the convicting.
Preach it, brother!!!
Yeah. Paedobaptism might have made one a "Catholic," but water baptism in any form or at any time doesn't make one a Christian.
The "unfinished business" is that for one who has knowingly repented from a life of sin, who has fallen in trust on Jesus for salvation, and thereby received remission of sins and a new spiritual life, ought to then present him/herself to the elders of a local assembly for the rite of water-baptism for induction into the body of Christ as a willing member and as a disciple-in-training for life.
The old infant baptism of an unresistant uncomplying ignorant infantile subject means exactly nothing in the life or doctrine of a servant of Christ.
Selah
Yeah. Paedobaptism might have made one a "Catholic," but water baptism in any form or at any time doesn't make one a Christian.
The "unfinished business" is that for one who has knowingly repented from a life of sin, who has fallen in trust on Jesus for salvation, and thereby received remission of sins and a new spiritual life, ought to then present him/herself to the elders of a local assembly for the rite of water-baptism for induction into the body of Christ as a willing member and as a disciple-in-training for life.
The old infant baptism of an unresistant uncomplying ignorant infantile subject means exactly nothing in the life or doctrine of a servant of Christ.
Such persons are not "wandering Catholics"--they are misled humans who have come under saving faith through preaching of the genuine Gospel, and have found the Way to God through true unreserved personal commitment to His Son.
Their well-founded disgust with the failings of catholicity are not to be taken as "profane" without checking their provenance and the intent.
I actually missed that myself the first few times I read it.
I refer you to the freely downloadable, thorough discussion of "The Seven Baptisms of the New Testament" (click here) by Fred Wittman, offered by Happy Heralds, Inc.
But thank you for giving me the opportunity to present this treatise.
But this is why so many persons denominating themsewlves as Catholics are in fact unregenerated "believers" who will have no excuse for being left behind when the Lord comes in the clouds to harvest His servants from the wrath to come.
16. God the Father gave his only Son to the world only through Mary. Whatever desires the patriarchs may have cherished, whatever entreaties the prophets and saints of the Old Law may have had for 4,000 years to obtain that treasure, it was Mary alone who merited it and found grace before God by the power of her prayers and the perfection of her virtues. "The world being unworthy," said Saint Augustine, "to receive the Son of God directly from the hands of the Father, he gave his Son to Mary for the world to receive him from her."
The Son of God became man for our salvation but only in Mary and through Mary.
God the Holy Spirit formed Jesus Christ in Mary but only after having asked her consent through one of the chief ministers of his court.
Again, you are shooting yourself in the foot. There are several words in the Koine for little children, and "paidion" is only one of them. In the case where I used it, it refers to those I specifically identified, and you are trying to move the goalposts.
Please don't think you are impressing me with this analysis. It's rather puerile (look that one up, eh?). Jesus never baptised, nor did any of His disciples ever baptize children not of an age to be instructed in the gospel and accountable as an adult to God of their actions. It is one thing to be childlike in demeanor, but another thing to be childish in responsive abilitities:
"Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men" (1 Cor. 14:20 AV).
Your verses do not touch the water baptism of saved adults who are able to commit themselves to Christ with the mind of Christ (Php. 2:5,8). Are the of a capacity to count the cost of commitment, of enduring persecution, of undertaking the responsibilities of becoming dead to Satan, to Sin as a master, to self, and tothe world system, and to come alive in Christ? Well, I thought not. Baptism of an unaccountable infant is incorrigibly criminal when he/she is later told that they were saved by that infant baptism, when it is not possible that they were.
No more discussion on this distraction. Your intent is to rob the Gospel of its true impact on those who have no control over their propensity to sin, and that is just what you are committing in this diatribe.
I seriously wonder what Catholic seminaries teach their students.
What did she NOT do to merit it?
Or what did she DO to merit it?
Can't say, but many FR Catholics have accused others of their brotherhood of being poorly catechized.
(I don't know what that means; either.)
There is merit it no human other than this - Christ died for us. Apart from that no one is righteous or has any standing in the eyes of God.
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