Posted on 04/20/2007 9:00:51 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
Are you describing the teaching of The Easy Believerism Church?
Nope...I was describing what the Apostle Paul taught to the church...It's the teaching of God to the Bible Believing church...
Ok, now I understand.
Looks to me like you have a bit of a God-complex.
thanks for your reply, but I'm gonna pass on your teaching.
The point apparently is so we can each be our own Church and guiding spirit of truth. YOPIOS returns with a vengeance, lol.
Paul (thru Jesus) cut out the middle man...No synagogues...No alter...No bloody sacrifices...One spiritual priest...
Paul's mission was winning converts to the Kingdom of God...And what is the Kingdom of God??? It's a spiritual kingdom...
And what is the 'chruch'??? It's an assembly of believers...No unbelievers allowed for membership...
Is the church required for salvation??? Absolutely NOT...The church is the RESULT of salvation...
Paul NEVER told anyone to go to church, or a church for salvation...
Acts 14: 21-23. What do you think Paul and Barnabas were doing except organizing church congregations. But who said that the Church is required for salvation? It is the means by which Christ gathers us into the kingdom. We call the Church the barque of Peter for that reason.
Thanks vox, that was an excellent article.
Numerous popes have said that...Numerous Catholics have said that on different threads in the last week...
It is the means by which Christ gathers us into the kingdom.
The Kingdom is spiritual...It is not physical...You don't have to go anywhere to get into the Kingdom of God...You can become a member of the Kingdom of God while driving in your car...
You are misreading. The Church is a necessary means of salvation, but only because it is the body of Christ and is the necessary link between Him, the incarnate God and mankind as a whole. That is the difference between Christianity and your religion, which seems to be a kind of gnosticism. The paradign is Paul, who was marked out by Christ but, as Acts makes clear, was a member of the Church.
I'm not misreading anything...
The Church is a necessary means of salvation, but only because it is the body of Christ and is the necessary link between Him, the incarnate God and mankind as a whole.
Hogwash...You may have learned that from your religion but you didn't get it from the word of God... You don't get salvation from the body of the church...You get salvation from the Head of the church...
The is NO link between Jesus Christ and the sinner, saved or not...Jesus said, "Come onto Me", not any religion that calls itself the church...
That is the difference between Christianity and your religion,
Sure, every one's a Christian now days...That's why the term has become meaningless...
Call on Jesus to save you...You'll be filled with the Spirit and you will KNOW that you have eternal life...
Paul teaches that the Church is the Body of Christ. We are saved by being united to God in an eternal communion of love, which is what Heaven is all about. How do we obtain that union with God? By becoming members of the Body of Christ; by being joined to Christ in His Body the Church. The Church is Christ still visibly present in the world. A person is visibly present through his body. Christ is present through His Body, the Church. The Church continues what Christ did in the world by His command, and with the authority He gave her. As He “taught with authority”, so He commissioned the Church to teach with authority and in His name: “Those who hear you hear me”, he said to the apostles, and “Those who reject you reject me and the one who sent me.” And: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Listen to that last statement. The sending of the apostles continues what God accomplished by sending the Son. And the apostles, in turn, sent others, as we read in the letters to Timothy and Titus. As Christ forgave sins
(”how can a man forgive sins”, the Jews asked), so he gave authority to the apostles (and those who came after them) to forgive sins: “Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them, whose sins you retain, they are retained.” As Christ taught with authority, forgave sins, preached, healed, so the Church continues to do.
The idea that because Christ did everything man is a passive spectator in the plan of salvation is contradicted on almost every page of the New Testament. We are to “take up our cross and follow” Him. Because “if we die with him we shall also reign with Him.” We must reproduce (as Saint Paul says) “the pattern of His death.” What Christ does we share in. We share in His sufferings and cross, we share in his task of preaching, and of healing, and forgiving.
God chose to use the human as the instrument of salvation. He became man. He chose men as apostles. Men wrote the New Testament under the guidance of the Spirit. There is not an either/or here. It is not God doing everything and we passive, or we doing things by our own power. No, God does things directly, but also through men, who act in His name and by His power.
I just went to Protestant service, because the pastor of that church is engaged in a pro-life effort in which I am involved, and I was there to hand out literature with his permission. That service (a Reformed one) was more man-centered than any Catholic Mass I have been to in my life!! At Mass, about half of the time is spent in prayer, and the words of most of those prayers are taken straight out of the Bible. They are not the priest’s words but the Bible’s words. Another quarter of the time is spent in readings from the Bible (3 readings: one from the Old Testament, one from the epistles, and one from the gospels, with a psalm in between). Then there is the sacrament. The sermon is about a quarter of the time. So, basically, Scriptural words and deeds (the sacrament) are front and center. It is not all about the pastor, whose only personal contribution is a 15-20 minute sermon that is about the meaning of the Scripture readings of the day. In contrast, in the Reformed service I just went to, it was all about the pastor. He preached for 2/3 of the time. And in his sermon he did not quote scripture even once!! And this was a self-described “conservative” evangelical pastor. He repeatedly spoke of the inerrancy of Scripture, but I heard relatively few words of Scripture in that service. The pastor dominated the service. His face was projected on a large screen that was above his head. In the Catholic Mass, there is above the priest, not a huge image of him, but rather a large crucifix: the image of our crucified God.
That pastor is a good man, of that I have no doubt. But the focus of that service seemed very man-centered to me. I go to Mass to (a) receive Christ’s Body and Blood in the sacrament -— that is going straight to Christ as directly as it is possible to do! When I receive Him there is nothing between me and Him -— (b) to hear the Scriptures read, (c) to pray (mostly in the very words of Scripture), and (d) to hear Scripture explained in the sermon. Only the last involves the personality of the priest in any way. The first three (a)-(c) give me direct access to Christ. It is the Protestant service that everything centers around the verbal performance of the preacher and his skills and personality. Protestants seem to choose their church by the fame and reputation of the pastor. When Catholics go to Mass, they generally don’t care who the priest is.
The apostles and the Church preached the Name. How is it that you even know the Name?
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