Posted on 05/27/2004 7:10:58 AM PDT by AskStPhilomena
The church existed from Adam to Godly Seth to Enoch to Noah to Abraham to Isaac and Jacob. The church was in existence when Melchizidec visited Abraham. The church was in existence with Moses and the prophets. David bespoke of the church when he asserted in the Psalms..."the Lord said to MY LORD, sit thou at my right hand!" The church was existence before time and space...before Abraham was, Christ IS. The church is Jesus Christ, our vine and we have become his branches. The church is the 6 years that went and accepted Jesus as her Saviour at the southern Baptist church last Sunday. The church is the rollicking Catholics of West Africa singing and dancing in the aisles before their Lord. The church is three Marines in Fallujah praying to Jesus over their injured comrade....
It is blasphemy to say that one bureaucracy on the Tiber is God's chosen church, a bureaucracy itself so in need of inner cleansing and moral/spiritual regeneration.
Those who have called upon the name of the Lord and have truly repented of their sins in spirit and in truth are his church. We all know what those sins are thru his word and in convictions of our conscience by the Holy Spirit, so none of us has any excuse.
I speak of not just Catholics but any line of reasoning that has one tradition or denomination claiming it is the true church. Jesus Christ is our true author and finisher of our faith and no Catholic priest will be there for each of us as we face Christ before his judgment seat. We each will face him individually...the only real question we will be asking our-selves is..will he say he knows me or knows me not? Will our names be found in the Lamb's book of Life? Will he tell me to depart from him into the place built for Satan and his minions?
The wolves have attacked the flocks in the Catholic and Higher Protestant churches. This loathsome Catholic triumphalism and the thoughtless counter Catholic Bashing from Protestants must cease and we must attack Godlessness together!(we must hang together for otherwise we shall certainly hang together---Ben Franklin)
God will work out the denominational differences in the day of resurrection....probably by pointing out where both Catholics and Protestants have gotten it wrong over the millenia!
Invincible ignorance does not impart grace. But it does make guilt impossible.
The Master wishes us to be a little more discerning than that.
"Bear not the yoke with unbelievers. For what participation hath justice with injustice? Or what fellowship hath light with darkness?" (2 Cor. vi.14)
Would you care to comment on any of the Scriptural defenses for Extra ecclesiam nulla salus presented in the article?
While I see your point, I think God is the one true judge of who is His own, not me. But I do believe and I daresay hope that His Own exist within all of the above.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
The Scriptural references cited are lifted from the surrounding contexts that don't support the doctrines that have been formed around them.
I could argue from them that the Eastern Orthodox Church is the true church...after all it was part of the whole 'till it split from Rome...maybe they are following the truth as Peter and the Apostles would have had the whole church follow until corruption began to invade the Western Church. I know they don't necessarily believe in the apostolic succession, but are you prepared to assert that there are no Orthodox adherents who worship Christ as Peter did in spirit and in truth? Are you prepared to say that the soldiers pictured praying over their injured comrade weren't exercising faith as Peter would have admonished them...despite the fact that they might not have been Catholic? Or the 6 year old girl at the southern Baptist church asking to be "saved"?
Christ said an interesting thing about the "sons of Abraham"; that is his"father knows how to make sons of Abraham from the very stones". The point is God's true children acknowledge Jesus Christ as saviour and Lord and worship him in spirit and in truth.
Christ can make us all "sons of Abraham by the spirit of Adoption" as Paul stated, the spilling of his very blood has guaranteed that.
I submit to you that any church or denomination that eschews evil and worships Christ in spirit and in Truth and thrusts out from them those who sexually pervert the truth of God is not only a true branch of Christ's vine but....A TRUE CHURCH OF PETER worthy of the name...IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH!
What on earth are you talking about?
The point is God's true children acknowledge Jesus Christ as saviour and Lord and worship him in spirit and in truth.
Yes, the truth of the Doctrine of Christ, taught by the Apostles, which if you do not assent to, you are not a Christian. See the Second Epistle of St. John. Only the Catholic Church teaches this Doctrine.
Yes, the Eucharist is the body, blood, soul and Divinity of Christ.
I thought they were not literally flesh and blood (the "substance" thing)?
It is literally what I described above, the physical accidents appear to us as bread and wine.
Or perhaps this is a metaphor for accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior in a deeply personal, genuine way. How about an adult who professes faith, joins the RCC, and dies before taking first communion? Out of luck, I guess?
He will save who He will save.
The Church is not the bureaucracy, it is the Divinely instituted organization that serves His will. The fallible human bureaucracy serves as means carrying out His will. Try not to confuse the two: one is perfect and the pillar and foundation of truth, the other serves, sometimes well and sometimes not so well, the truth. It is that core of truth that is the Church and it is only found in it's fullness in the Catholic Church.
You believe He left a confused rabble of divergent interpretation. I do not.
I'm always amazed at the willing ness of other Christians to point out the sometimes wicked actions of some who serve the Church and attempt to use those actions as evidence of the illegitimacy of the Church. If the acts of a rebellious few can destroy the legitimacy of the Church, than Christianity as a whole has been "proved" illegitimate by the acts of individual "Christan's" throughout history. The last centuries alone featured "Christian" institutions like Apartheid. Does this invalidate the whole of Christianity? No, it simply invalidates the defective nature of individual interpretation of scripture, aka YOPIOS.
One can read the Bible and know what the Church is and should be about. The Church starts first with the Head Vine which is Jesus Christ and its members or the branches are those who have accepted his gift of salvation. That is the very basic truth that all Godly churhes, Catholic and Protestant, (that is those who have not bowed to the Anti-christian Apostacy that is gathering strength in our world) that empowers the witness of these churches.
To apostate Protestants, I would say that that church has a rather narrow door, which is to say Jesus Christ who urges all men to repent and accept his blood sacrifice. The old laws still apply(despite our inability to live by them); we are expected to show spiritual fruit by showing that we live by God's moral laws thru the out-working of the Holy Spirit in our lives(hearts of flesh vs tablets of stone). It is just that when we fail and repent there is the blood of Jesus and his grace and forgiveness. Works themselves don't save us, but if we live as Soddomites, don't think that God will with-hold judgment! Scripture says judgment first begins in the House of God! We are still to hold our flesh in contempt, but we are free of condemnation because we are in Christ Jesus
To otherwise Godly and forthright Catholics I would say that that Christ's(and Peter's) Church is a much more broadly Universal, transtemporal reality cannot be contained by bureaucratic priests, Bishops, Cardinals, and Popes, many of which have also become like the Soddomites of old. Any church worthy of Peter would behave as Peter would behave and would admonish as Peter would admonish. I dare say that there are true churches of Peter that call themselves protestant as they are spiritually in tune with that same reality that Peter was in tune with, namely Christ Jesus!
Any church, Catholic or Protestant that holds to Biblical and Godly morality, whose people worship God in spirit and in truth, are worthy to be called churches of Christ Jesus(and of Peter and the prophets and apostles as they would approve of such churches)!
One can read the Bible and know what the Church is and should be about. The Church starts first with the Head Vine which is Jesus Christ and its members or the branches are those who have accepted his gift of salvation. That is the very basic truth that all Godly churhes, Catholic and Protestant, (that is those who have not bowed to the Anti-christian Apostacy that is gathering strength in our world) that empowers the witness of these churches.
To apostate Protestants, I would say that that church has a rather narrow door, which is to say Jesus Christ who urges all men to repent and accept his blood sacrifice. The old laws still apply(despite our inability to live by them); we are expected to show spiritual fruit by showing that we live by God's moral laws thru the out-working of the Holy Spirit in our lives(hearts of flesh vs tablets of stone). It is just that when we fail and repent there is the blood of Jesus and his grace and forgiveness. Works themselves don't save us, but if we live as Soddomites, don't think that God will with-hold judgment! Scripture says judgment first begins in the House of God! We are still to hold our flesh in contempt, but we are free of condemnation because we are in Christ Jesus
To otherwise Godly and forthright Catholics I would say that that Christ's(and Peter's) Church is a much more broadly Universal, transtemporal reality cannot be contained by bureaucratic priests, Bishops, Cardinals, and Popes, many of which have also become like the Soddomites of old. Any church worthy of Peter would behave as Peter would behave and would admonish as Peter would admonish. I dare say that there are true churches of Peter that call themselves protestant as they are spiritually in tune with that same reality that Peter was in tune with, namely Christ Jesus!
Any church, Catholic or Protestant that holds to Biblical and Godly morality, whose people worship God in spirit and in truth, are worthy to be called churches of Christ Jesus(and of Peter and the prophets and apostles as they would approve of such churches)!
"What on earth are you talking about?"
You don't see what is happening in the Catholic and Protestant churches and you ask me what I am talking about?
Don't live in a spiritual shoe-box man...the Christ's church(in the traditions of Peter, Paul, the apostles and prophets, empowered by the Holy Spirit, fed by his blood) is bigger than the Vatican!
Christ's church...is bigger than the Vatican!
Yes, it is: It is the visible religious society of all those who profess the faith of the Apostles and are in communion with the Pope. It is known by its four marks: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. It is the only Ark of Salvation, outside of which no one will be saved.
Actually, we do.
Well there you go then....which of you..Orthodox or Catholic can claim Peter's priestly vision and who are we darkly Protestant Christian wannabe's supposed to believe?
Brother, that's been the $64,000 question for the last 1,000 years. You will just have to examine the evidence presented by both sides and work from there. I suspect most Protestants are comfortable where they are and won't bother with it. I was not one of those. I ended up converting to Orthodoxy.
Hopefully, one day, we will get reunified and there won't be a difference anymore. Some say our differences are relatively small, others say we are now worlds apart. In any case, one thing is for sure: these differences are big enough to have kept us divided this long. It will take much time and patience to sort it all out.
One flock, one shepherd. Looking at the present state of Christianity and proclaiming unity flies in the face of reality. One flock, one Shepherd. Nothing you can say can convince me that this, this disunity is what Christ had in mind when He founded a Church.
I say any church, protestant or Catholic, that acts according to the Spirit of Peter and the apostles(one can get the sense of that vision by reading the BOOKS of Peter...1st and 2nd from the Bible) are acting within the true apostolic and spiritual authority. Peter himself in those Epistles asserts that it is "Christ that is the CHIEF cornerstone of the church". Why doesn't he assert that Christ had made him the true Church's one foundation in his epistles...hmmmm?
It is the Spirit and Truth of Worship that denotes true apostolic and spirtual authority, not the traditions of men! True churches of Peter will ACT like true church's of Peter! And that is the dirty little reality that many churches...Catholic and Protestant as well avoid discussion about!
To borrow from a political line...It's the Fruits of the Spirit....would be enlightened ones!(I don't like the term stupid....it doesn't fit here!)
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