Replies

Well all I can say is its a belief.

Accepted.

Now we have different ways of looking at it. I believe in the Church that produced the book. I believe other people believe the book translated the way they can understand.

I believe the Spirit wrote the Book. Both the first Covenant, and the second. Anyone, or any human organization which happened to be associated therewith is incidental.

I am no mystic.

Not meant in a derogatory way, but in the generic... Spiritually oriented...

But the first Christians walked in the Holy Spirit . We still can and do walk in the Holy Advocate Spirit. Like our redeemer who talk about the advocate. I have a sense of spiritual things just like you do.

So it seems... and as I said, it is not often I meet such in the RCC. Bravo.

Also Your assumption is in the Bible only. If thats true who do we go to for the right reading. Don’t say Holy Spirit only otherwise why all the disagreements with Thousands of denominations.

Oh, but I will say the Holy Spirit. Those thousands of denominations stand thousands strong on most beliefs... on the important ones. It is my observation that the differences are in large part due to particular focus, and more likely, due to traditions. And that is not altogether bad.

They all claim Holy Spirit then contradict each other. Someone has to be the real caretaker of the deposit of faith. Surely God Never intended the mess of differences.

I believe the Holy Spirit is the "deposit of faith". If all the churches were suddenly to collapse, and all the Bibles on the Earth were burned, there would be a remnant. Just as there has always been with Israel - It is that remnant which IS the true Church.

And I believe that no matter what, the Spirit WILL succeed - God's Words do not return to Him empty. Soon enough, Apostles would be designated, scribes would be inspired, and the Book would be found, or rewritten again.

As far as the difference between the RCC and the Protestants - and this is the part I wanted to chew on before my reply - That difference can be likened to a term used by computer folks who deal with operating systems:

"The Cathedral and the Bazaar."

Closed source systems, the biggest of which is Microsoft, protect the source code for their software (the Windows operating System, among others), very closely guarded. No one can access the source code accept those who have been scrupulously approved. Guards are posted, non-disclosure agreements are signed... Production dates and dollar signs drive development. All bulwarks and drawbridges, Microsoft is the "Cathedral".

Open source systems, the most noted of which is the Linux community, is the polar opposite. Anyone can access the source code (any and all source code) at any time. Anyone can build an operating system from the individual files according to their wants and desires, following a strict, but minimal framework.

All of the various "kinds" are published, and the best compilation(s) are determined by the market, and the entire system is completely FREE. Not only "free as in beer," as the community coins it, but "free as in liberty."

Linux is the "Bazaar (flea market)."

Now, the castle mentality, the "Cathedral," has all of the market share, and holds that market share by means of force: They threaten their "flock" with excommunication (at the buyer/manufacturer level) if they do not "toe-the-line." They spend literally billions on every system version, with very little improvement. They live or die by their decisions "on high."

But the end users were constantly frustrated. Promises made by the advertising department were never quite true, the product was poor, and tended to lock-up quite often. finally, as no redress for grievance was available, it came to a point that any price, any cost was worth the effort to get out of under the corporate behemoth and it's restrictive, and purposefully unfair EULA agreements.

Along comes Open Source - a community of true believers. They don't care about the bottom line, they care about the code. Every one of them strives to make the thing just right. No more deadlines, no more department heads, no more lawyers, or sales teams. And they produce something nimble and wholly configurable, good for nearly any application - and they do it, for the most part, for free.

But there are some problems. there are many varieties of linux, and the better ones developed followings among them. And there is terrible infighting at times, as each "brand" is fought over as to which methods are best... But anyone who runs a Linux system, be it BSD, Gentoo, Red Hat, Mandrake, Slack, Ubuntu, Mint, or a thousand other varieties, they KNOW they are running Linux, to be sure. And they ARE running Linux - They are all basically the same. And they are all beautiful

The thing with the bazaar, it is a rowdy cacophonous place. One who has never been to one might consider it chaotic at their first look. But the nice thing about a flea market is that there is always another stall. No one can possibly corner the market with an inferior product, because inferior products just wilt away and die on the vine. The bazaar itself is very hard to change because it is born of change... change guards it and it changes constantly - Always being refilled with product by those who do a better job for the end user. But the structures of the bazaar, the stalls and alleys, it's framework, changes very little.

The outcome is inevitable. Microsoft cannot keep up. While it can pay for a hundred thousand code writers, it can in no sense succeed against millions of true believers writing excellent code for free. Microsoft, my FRiend, is doomed. The bazaar, Linux, will overtake it. It is just a matter of time.

And the moral of this story? Between the Roman Catholic church and the Protestants?

It is quite simple, and quite evident: God went Open Source.