Posted on 05/04/2005 10:53:04 AM PDT by Quix
Don't know him that well, but that one book of his put me very much on my guard.
But I've seen enough overseas to believe the bulk of what he says. The Chinese church is very much as he describes it. Including with the resurrections.
I don't doubt that the Father is working still.
But I don't think it's time to lie back confident that the Word is spreading as fast as it should just because Mr. Rutz says it is.
There are one billion Muslims in the world and they need Christ badly.
- not near-death experiences, but real resurrections of actual corpses.
Know what the problem of being a resurrection corpse is?? Your body is messed up; it was dead! Nerves are no good. Hearing improves??? Taste, smell, feeling, and vision is less than half, 3/4.
Memory dumps as does personality--so you get born again :-).
Miracles maybe aren't so great when they happen to you...
Gal 2:9.
See ya....
Galatians 2:9
You made a contentious comment.
It should be pretty clear from Acts and the letters to Timothy that the Church had a defined institutional structure very early on, with centralized finances, counsels, defined roles within the Church for different Christians, etc.
You mean as Martin Luther did?
20"For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst."
In that they say they are, and they believe in and follow Christ Jesus. Whether they truly are, we're unable to judge. It's kind of like Republicans: some truly are, and some are actually RINOs; but, if there's a big R after their title and they're registered in the party, they are Republican.
Let me know when you nail your theses to the Vatican door....
Thanks for the citation. So what's your point?
When Christians gather Christ is in their midst, of course.
This does not mean that when 10,000 Christians gather they are an amorphous mass - are you denying that Paul clearly gave Timothy instructions on how to run a Christian church and how to vet pastors?
Or that Paul described the Church as a body with various members with different tasks and responsibilities?
Are you denying that Christians in the NT period exercised discipline over their members, held councils, gave decrees, etc.?
Are you basically saying that witness of the Apostles and the NT is useless?
What does this comment have to do with the price of tea in China?
I think the original poster's point was that in its earliest days the Church had figures of authority and that Mr. Rutz's favorite notion - the "open Church" - has nothing to do with Christianity as it has been practiced from Scripture days until now.
IMhO,
Yes and no.
I suspect that the early church was tons more like the underground church in China than any of the institutional stuff you want to point to.
Hazards aplenty in that. And the growing institution dealt with some of those hazards
AND IMPLEMENTED IN THEIR STEAD THOSE WHICH CHRIST MOST CONDEMNED in the religious INSTITUTION and the RELIGIOUS leaders of His dusty pathed days.
I say again . . . any congregation older than about a year and a half is already seeding it's own death and uselessness to The Kingdom by the slow to fast build-up of customs of men; doctrines of men; traditions of men vs the leading of Holy Spirit.
I'll take the rough and ready street Christianity of the underground Chinese church any day over that. And, I have a persistent and recurring impression that God feels rather similarly.
Who do you think Scripture speaks of true believers being CALLED OUT FROM; CALLED OUT OF--TO LEAVE--AS IN LEAVING AN EVIL THING???
I don't recall anyone in the article or hereon suggesting laziness, apathy or negligence was the least bit in order.
Sorry, that was a response to mike182d's comment about Luther.
Perhaps you are lovingly teasing and tweaking me.
If not . . .
Do you really think that Christ's body and that of Lazarus were as you characterized?
God tends to do ALL THINGS WELL.
Particularly Resurrections.
I'd suspect it's with at least the improvements of a general overhaul.
I'm basically saying that you would have made a wonderful Pharisee....
Are you aware at all
of the Biblical and other extensive evidence that
God the Father . . .
is KEENLY interested MUCH MORE in
RELATIONSHIP vs RELIGION
SUBSTANCE vs form
WALKING THE TALK vs having committee meetings about possibilities of conveying the extensively robust yet complex and multi-faceted aspects of the ground of our being upon the existential substrate of our emotionally, psychologically and sociologically fractured cultural mileu and national gestalt?
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