Posted on 01/27/2008 7:56:14 PM PST by Manfred the Wonder Dawg
Amen!
No question is to tough to ask. The answer is there!
If the Holy Spirit decides to open someone's eyes, praise God. If not, we've still done as He commanded us to do -- preach the word in truth in season and out.
My former pastor was a retired Army Chaplain. He told me of a soldier who suffered burns all over his body. He was in agony for about a week. He kept preaching THE GOSPEL and praising the LORD until he died. May we all be blessed to meet this Saint one day.
***I truly wish and pray each of us would truly love the Lord Jesus and obey Him as He has commanded us. Walk in the spirit and many thanks for your courteous and sometimes rambunctious conversation.***
To truly love God and one another is the pinnacle of Gospels, regardless of those that would sneeringly point out that only those given a limo ride to Heaven could possibly be included.
Many thanks and may your prayers reflect upon you as well.
Rambunctious? Nonsense. I’m as straightlaced as a Presbyterian teetotaler on a Saturday night in Las Vegas.
HD-So let's focus on the email.
Sandyeggo-I don't know, and you don't know either.
And that's my point. On one hand you say we can't evaluate broad accusations, then on the other hand you say we can't evaluate specific instances. My, my. What ever is a Catholic to do?
Some who would call themselves Protestants probably feel that wouldn't be the "loving" thing to do. ;O)
***I ask my RC friends who they would rather be employed by? A boss or a father?
A man labors for a boss to please him and get a paycheck. A man labors for his father because his father loves him.
One is recompense; the other gratitude and love.***
More family in business together either bankrupts or fails in other ways than is the norm. Have you experience in real life outside these forums and the Presbyterian Churches (and whichever others you may church hop to)? I know what you are trying to say, but, believe me, I perceive posts if writtne by one divorced from real life.
The ideal answer should be that a man would go into business with his father because he loves him. The answer in real life is the opposite.
***There is the view of the Catholic Church, a view espoused more and more by Protestants: Justification is making a man righteous in his own person. It is by faith and works that a man is transformed in the righteous person that is justified before God. ***
Have a little more out of that bottle. This is untrue and was expressly denied by the Catholic Church many long centuries before Martin Luther and Jean Calvin were puling infants.
The rest of your post, which builds upon this falsehood, is wrong, wrong, and more wrong. Try actually finding out what the true Church is all about before you post ludicrous posts building an easily refutable strawman.
How about heading over to New Advent and finding out what they ACTUALLY say about the Grace of God. You might advance your Christianity to the point where you repudiate some of your former beliefs.
Then let's be specific:
Our Lady of Guadalupe is, for many, at the root of Mexico's national identity and its contemporary faith. Mexicans venerate her image, which is both a religious and cultural symbol. It decorates murals, storefronts, even niches in front of houses in Hispanic neighborhoods.
Thousands of pilgrims flock to Mexico's basilica daily to pray to an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, some crawling for blocks on their hands and knees.
The controversy has threatened to result in a religious backlash. "All this back-and-forth, this war of accusations discredits the church as an institution," said Fabiola Guarnero, a religious analyst.
But pilgrims still flock to the basilica by the thousands, more focused on asking the Virgin of Guadalupe for miracles than the controversy that swirls around her. - CNN
Do you feel the Church should approve or disapprove of venerating an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. (Please note they are venerating an image-not the Virgin of Guadalupe herself.)
***Quix’s God is living and the one true God. Shame on you for inferring otherwise.***
Quix has a God? His own personal and true God?
Does he keep Him on the hall stand and rub His head for luck when he goes by?
I can discern little of Quix’s true God (tm) in his posts.
***How sad that you can’t recognize that God speaks to and through his prophets and his people even today***
Quix is a prophet? Are you? Who is a modern day prophet and how can you tell?
***It’s apparent that you don’t believe much in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.***
Oh I believe in them and I believe that they exist and that the Holy Spirit liberally distributes them.
I don’t believe that the Holy Spirit is leading prancing, dancing, strutting peacocks who claim that every deed that they do is led by the Holy Spirit, and that they personally are justified because they have a Gnostic belief that they personally are inhabited by the indwelling Holy Spirit.
I don’t believe these folks at all. I think that many are phony opportunists, many are sincere but misled, and many are simply wrong.
Jesus left us His Church. If your indwelling Holy Spirit is confirmed by the Church, then I will believe it. If you repudiate the Church, then logically, you cannot be led by the Holy Spirit.
***But that wouldn’t further anyone’s theological understanding, so I’ll keep it to myself.***
I thank you for it. Those of us in the real world get the point.
***Reformed theology, just like Paul and the Apostles, bases every thought, word and deed on Jesus Christ. ***
Wrong again. Look through the WCF proofs and tell me the percentage of Gospel Scriptures used as proof.
***But in the nearby post where I offer Christ’s exact words, you dismiss them with an haughty “irrelevant.” lol.***
You’re batting 0.000 today. Your post offered no proof of your point, as is normal and usual. I very often see Scripture quoted entirely out of context, and often see it used as proofs when it obviously means something else.
*** didn’t know the RCC only used the red letters of the Bible, but if that’s all you’ll respond to, then read this and learn by it.***
Which Catholic did you mug to acquire the word of Jesus?
John 17: Jesus is referring to the Apostles. Wrong.
Matthew 7: exhorts us all to act correctly. Works, you know.
Matthew 15: tells us expressly that God is not the author of sin. More works.
John 3: tells us that we must be born again. Catholics have had this practice since AD 32. If I recall correctly, you’ve been doing it since 1936.
John 10: tells us about those of us who have accepted God’s Grace.
I’m not surprised that you don’t know what they mean since the Reformed are not acquainted with them whatsoever, neither do they know what to do with them when they do confront them. But we’ll pray for you, as we do for all.
We’ll bring you the Bible, even though the heathens spit upon us and pluck our beards.
***Reformed Theology is the only theology that take the unity of Scripture serious while at the same time carefully distinguishing between the continuities and discontinuities.***
Have you established a routine at the Second City? This is hilarious.
***Then stop criticizing the Reformers for quoting Paul since we do so not to the exclusion of the words of Christ, but in tandem with them.***
The Reformed mostly ignore the Gospels except to pull out of context snippets. Look at the utter confusion that occurred when they were asked to summarize the Gospels.
They also do not understand Paul. The most widely quoted and dearly held verses of Paul by the Reformed are those where Paul admonishes straying congregations. This is then whipped together with fanciful interpretations from the OT and emerge as Reformed theology where the few are frogmarched into Heaven and the many are cast into hell.
***You think a Protestant should research a Catholic problem and offer up Church discipline? I’d be laughed out of the Vatican. ***
No you wouldn’t. Protestants don’t seem to understand that right is right and wrong is wrong. If the Catholic Church says something, then it is. Unlike the unenlightened churches of men, it is guided by the Holy Spirit.
You might be surprised if you tried. Frankly, I wish that you would, if you spotted some departure from teachings.
***Funny, I don’t believe Paul ever said Jesus was wrong.***
We never said that. We said that the Reformed theology is wrong and it is based upon a misunderstanding of Scripture entirely, but mostly a misunderstanding of Paul.
***After criticizing our use of Paul’s words in Scripture, Mark then tells us in post 508...
“We consider Paul to be pretty well on a par with Peter as the greatest of the Apostles, with all the others as lessers.”
So there’s no pleasing some people.***
When the foundation of sand shifts, where will you be? We revere Paul, we hate the misunderstanding of his words and the use of that misunderstanding as justification for evil theologies.
Well, unless your point, together with your scripture is consistent with the totality of inspired scripture, then you're not going to change my views. But then, neither would you change my views using uninspired sources, unless they were in conformity with the totality of inspired scripture. So, I don't understand why you would need to note the difference. Besides, among the principals on all sides around here, I doubt there are going to be many major conversions. :) There are plenty of lurkers, though, who might benefit greatly from the various comments. In addition to that, I have learned a tremendous amount from those of like minds in their postings. It's all win-win.
[continuing:] It would not, has not and will not until you commit to read the Holy Writ with new eyes. Not in the piecemeal pretexting fashion we are so used to here on FR but in a coherent, cogent way that brings to life the greatest love story ever written: Gods love for man.
But I've already done that by the grace of God. God gives all believers new ears and new eyes. His word IS life.
The Duck billed Platypus has a bill, webbed feet and lays eggs, but it is not a duck. If these people actually believed that the stone answered their prayers, that would be idolatry ...
It would be the WORST kind of idolatry, but not the only kind. I looked into this a little, and as I recently posted to Dr. E., I did find Biblical examples where it appeared that the idol itself WAS the false god. However, there are other examples which appear to show a conduit to a false god. For example:
Deut 16:21-22 : 21 Do not set up any wooden Asherah pole beside the altar you build to the Lord your God, 22 and do not erect a sacred stone, for these the Lord your God hates.
Asherah was supposedly a goddess, so it would not have been the pole itself. Presumably the poles (or trees) were used in conjunction with prayer of some sort. So here, we see that God hates even the idea of a conduit. Further evidence:
2 Kings 21:7-11 : 7 He took the carved Asherah pole he had made and put it in the temple, of which the Lord had said to David and to his son Solomon, "In this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my Name forever. 8 I will not again make the feet of the Israelites wander from the land I gave their forefathers, if only they will be careful to do everything I commanded them and will keep the whole Law that my servant Moses gave them." 9 But the people did not listen. Manasseh led them astray, so that they did more evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites. 10 The Lord said through his servants the prophets: 11 "Manasseh king of Judah has committed these detestable sins. He has done more evil than the Amorites who preceded him and has led Judah into sin with his idols.
So here we have reference to the pole being called an idol, and since it was placed in the Temple, it must have something to do with prayer to the separate entity, Asherah. God says the idols are evil. It would be easy to say that the only thing God hated was that the idols were "to" the wrong God. However, in my previous post to you I quoted:
Deut 4:16 : 16 so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, ...
There is no reference to the image being to a false god or not. It just says no "image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman ..." God hates the idol itself, regardless if it was intended for noble purposes or not. He knows what the danger is to us of falling into the idol and away from Him.
LOL! "Prove" I'm not Catholic? What are you -- high inquisitor? I owe you nothing of the sort. But thanks for confirming my point.
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