Every day.
And there were songs of praise in Heaven as one that was lost was now found!! Alleluia! I fervently pray that those who are lost in the false world created by the “reformers” have their eyes opened and that they all come home to the One Hold Catholic and Apostolic Church.
“Then one day when I was reading the Scripture I read Paul talking about how he was the most religious Pharisee, the most upright, and you know my heart was pierced and I actually laughed about how I could claim I had been one of the best Calvinists around, but then it hit me. Was that even something to boast about?”
Then, is being one of the best Catholics around something to boast about? Pot, meet kettle.
Ping
Another unregenerate man looking for God.
I guess he got tired of God not looking for him.
More rejoicing in heaven for this man than for Mother Teresa!!
I kept coming back to Ignatius and Polycarp as I could not get them out of my mind.
That's funny. I'm reading these guys (what little we have of them) right now, and I'm not bowled over by their supposed resemblance to the modern Roman Catholic church.
Except for the most immature, and uneducated person, I've never met a "Calvinist" who believed this. Calvin himself, and even the most hyper-Calvinist Puritans, studied and valued the Church Fathers, Augustine, Bernard Clairveax, Hillary of St. Vincent, etc., and never suggested Hell had prevailed before the 16th Century. Of course God worked in and through the only church organization allowed to exist before the Reformation.
Calvinism too emphasizes grace most of all...saying we are not saved by our cooperation with God's mercy, rather He does all the saving...from start to finish. If Rodney Beason was a Pharisee as an Orthodox Presbyterian, it was because he didn't know Calvin and Calvinism enough, which puts the highest priority in the Word of God, by grace alone, through faith alone by Christ alone.
For every evangelical who becomes Roman Catholic, I'd bet there are 10 Roman Catholics in evangelical churches...including the OPC.
Our Lord lived here on earth 2000 years ago so how could any group that did not come about til centuries later be his church? So that lets out the “reformers”, the Mormons, the JWs etc..
It’s simply a matter of history. The Catholic Church built upon St Peter the Rock was here first!
So many put the cart before the horse! Instead of looking to see (through their private interpretation) what the Bible says they should look first to the Church who gave the Bible!
Christ did not give a book to be the ultimate authority He gave us a Church!
**I even persecuted the Catholic Church and went after every one of them I found, beating them back with Scripture, upon Scripture, upon quotes of Luther, Calvin, etc. I found great pleasure in debating Catholics. **
And unless people abandon this practice and repent of the sins of rejecting Christ and leading others away from him, and promise to cease in the practice of bashing his word and sacrament in the Catholic church; they will find themselves facing God at the moment they die and discover they are still headed the wrong way — to ?????
A Convert's Pilgrimage [Christopher Cuddy]
Lutheran professor of philosophy prepares to enter Catholic Church
Patty Bonds (former Baptist and sister of Dr. James White) to appear on The Journey Home - May 7
Pastor and Flock Become Catholics
The journey back - Dr. Beckwith explains his reasons for returning to the Catholic Church
Famous Homosexual Italian Author Returned to the Church Before Dying of AIDS
Dr. Francis Beckwith Returns To Full Communion With The Church
Catholic Converts - Stephen K. Ray (former Evangelical)
Catholic Converts - Malcolm Muggeridge
Catholic Converts - Richard John Neuhaus
Catholic Converts - Avery Cardinal Dulles
Catholic Converts - Israel (Eugenio) Zolli - Chief Rabbi of Rome
Catholic Converts - Robert H. Bork , American Jurist (Catholic Caucus)
Catholic Converts - Marcus Grodi
I'm amazed at how often this verse is misapplied. It so often seems to be interpreted as saying that hell will be attacking the church but the church will be able to survive it. In fact, it is saying that the church will be advancing against hell and the gates of hell will not prevent them from doing so. The Body of Christ...all believers bound together by their faith in the risen Lord...continues to advance as His Kingdom expands daily.
I thought that was a lie and for 1500 years, the Church had been without truth and the gates of hell had prevailed.
As a Calvinist, I have never believed that the church had been without the truth until the time of the Reformation. Rather, just as God at times had to purify His covenant people by fire, so His Church had to endure the Reformation in order to cleanse itself of some of the false teachings. And just as God's covenant people of Israel had split during its history and then eventually exploded beyond the boundaries of a single nation, so the Church has had the same happen.
Any Reformed Protestant who believes there was no true church until the 16th century didn't pay much attention to the words of the Reformers and is likely letting their opposition to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church lead them to throw the baby out with the bath water.
I am a Calvinist, and am saved. I was predetermined to be saved. I didn't have to do anything.. nothing at all. I thought it was a big deal when I accepted Christ, but in retrospect, its not really, since I didn't really choose to. I was predestined to do so.
After that I spent a lot of time partying. Why not? I'm saved?
But then someone pointed out that if I was truly saved, I wouldn't party, so I stopped partying.
But at least I didn't have to go to church. Well, maybe not. All of those who were lucky like me to be predestined (sorry for the rest of you, you will burn in hell) go to church. We don't have to, I mean, we are saved no matter what. But, out of thanks for being saved, we got to church every sunday.
Everyone at my church is saved. How do I know? Because they were all predestined, and if they weren't predestined, they wouldn't go to my church.
Now, its not like you can just go to my church and be saved, but if you do got to my church, you will be saved, because if you weren't predestined you wouldn't go to my church.
Got it?
Not exactly. The Early Church is Orthodox (and catholic).
The problem is not how "Catholic" the early church fathers were, but how "unCatholic" the church of Rome became over the years. I am not one who believes the Roman church is antichrist (although I wince at some of the language in ch 12-14 of the Council of Trent). NEITHER DID LUTHER. His goal was to REFORM the church. Their response was "recant or die" and so we have the split. Schisms in Christendom are always unpleasant, and never happy and always unfortunate. Rectifying them always calls for repentance.
I hope it does not sound too terribly mushy and dismissive of truth to say that we Protestants should ALWAYS be willing to look at our history with Roma and be willing to repent. On the other hand Rome should certainly be willing to repent and renounce its schismatic ways in denying the teaching of the church fathers even as it lauds them. My opinion is that the Roman church left the true biblical and apostolic faith over the issues of:
1) Infused vs Imputed righteousness. Imputed righteousness is just the corpse of Pelagianism, all dolled up to look different. It is, as Augustine clearly understood, a modified works righteousness. Men save themselves, and God helps. Thank God that even those who advocate it do not seem to truly understand what they are pushing. Otherwise, they would be damned. Trent accurately called it (the issue of justifying faith) an issue for "anathema" (the word rendered damned or condemned in Galatians 1. They are simply, two different gospels.
2)The authority of church tradition vs the authority of Scripture. No protestant denies that we ALL reverence the opinions of good and godly men who have gone before. I truly believe that protestants disservice themselves by being so ignorant of the luminaries in the pre and post Reformation Roman Church. Also, I will be the first to tell you that Luther was a wack job in his tirades against the Jews (Himmler used his suggestions as to what to do with Jews as an operational plan for the 3rd Reich), the covenanters were a bunch of hotheads, many Reformers will have to answer SERIOUS questions before God over what they did to the anabaptists, and that the burning of Servetus was not Calvin's, er, "most glorious moment" (let's leave it at that). However the Roman Church has an UNbiblical view of tradition, which prevents it from (as a church) repenting over its clear and unambiguous errors, whether they be the "reverse jihadism" of the Crusades, or the Council of Trent, or the monstrous wickedness of Torquemada. Once they have been pronounced by the Pope, they become a part of the word of God as it is handed down by tradition. This is horrid. The idea that the church speaks with the voice of God (there seems to be some merit for a modified view of this in Matthew 18, when Jesus talks about being "present" when excommunication is being pronounced) is ONLY as the church speaks in submission to the spoken word of God. There is a great deal of foolishness, poppycock, and downright damnable heresy that exists in the "authoritative" declarations of the Roman Church and they simply need to repent of this wickedness. Scripture judges church tradition, even as tradition helps us understand the proper (including the historical) view of the word of God.
3) Marioloty and reverence for saints is nothing more than syncretism with the pagan tribes which came into the church. The foolishness and idolatry of praying to Mary and/or saints who have gone before is simply unbiblical and idolatrous. On this, the reformers were dead on, and the Roman church is simply in error.
That said, I DO understand and I DO have a great deal of sympathy why the "praying to the saints" stuff happens. I had a dear brother in Christ die of cancer this past week. I commented to a friend that I understood why there this practice (praying to saints) could happen. Bill (not his real name) is not "up there" with Christ, but I still have a very real and substantive connection with him. There is a biblical union with ALL of Christ's people, not just the ones who have gone on. Death is horrid obscene and a rupture in the union and connection I share with this man. Christ has spit in the face of death, and stomped the "life" out of it, and the rupture betwee "Bill" and I is, in fact, an illusion. I am one with this man, and his death has not changed that. The ancients instinctively knew that, and the spiritists and witches actually have a better view of the fact that we inhabit a spirit world than most Christians do. They (the pagans) err in rejecting the one true door (Christ, through faith) INTO that spirit world, but they are more cognizant of it than most Christians, who are functional rationalists except at 11:00 am on Sunday mornings. There is more room for "mysticism" in the Roman church, and so this reality is received (that is GOOD), and transformed into a spirtual discipline of praying to human beings who have died and gone on (most decidedly BAD and a direct violation of the first commandment).
When asked why do I not return to the "mother church" when some very kind souls (I believe very sincere and saved people) inform me that the age of indulgences is over, my response is "to be sure. Rome should repent of these unbiblical practices and join the true faith." If we could have unity on these issues, I personally would not care who joined who, to be frank.
That is most interesting. I wonder what he read that I missed in these guys. I too fell in love with the early Church Fathers while in Seminary (I am a graduate of Westminster, btw. I spent two years at Reformed and then graduated from WTS). The first paper in Church History I did was on Clement of Alexandria. I was fascinated with the Ante and Post Nicene Fathers and REALLY enjoyed reading lots of Aquinas (ok, NO ONE reads all the works of Aquinas. If someone tells you they have, they will lie to you about other stuff too!), Bernard of Clairvaux (what a study in contrasts!), Anselm, St Francis, and other "mighty men." I deliberately veered away from Calvin, Luther, Knox, Beza, Zwingli, Hus (a reformer before the reformation), Cranmer, Latimer, and the reformers, as I had read about them and had spent a summer in Switzerland (L'Abri) and took a bunch of side trips to Protestant "shrines" associated with these guys.
I have to say, I wonder what books this guy read on the church fathers!!!! I found them to be men of contrasts, to be sure. I found some weird weird weird views (origen was a universalist, and a proto Arian when he wasn't cutting off his own balls in the name of seeking Christ) among some of them, but what I also found was that LUTHER WAS RIGHT. He had argued that the church had in fact, abandoned the simple message that Salvation is of God alone through faith alone and that man can no more "contribute" to his salvation than he can sprout wings and fly to the moon. The reformation forced the church to articulate and codify the orthodox faith re: justification, just as Arius and Athanasius were at loggerheads over the deity of Christ, necessitating a fissure in the church at Nicea (the fissure was "sealed" by Constantine picking sides and using the power of the state to enforce it, but that is another story).
The bottom line is that the early church fathers were, in fact, REFORMED. I can't understand "pounding the table" and wailing in frustration here, as the very men this guy quotes would have been aghast at the crap that came from the council of Trent.
Did he have books on these guys that I just missed?
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of interest.