Posted on 01/14/2011 5:57:52 PM PST by topcat54
Evangelical book catalogs promote books such as Planet Earth: The Final Chapter, The Great Escape, and the Left Behind series. Bumper stickers warn us that the vehicle’s occupants may disappear at any moment. It is clear that there is a preoccupation with the idea of a secret rapture. Perhaps this has become more pronounced recently due to the expectation of a new millennium and the fears regarding potential Y2K problems. Perhaps psychologically people are especially receptive to the idea of an imminent, secret rapture at the present time. Additionally, many Christians are not aware that any other position relative to the second coming of Jesus Christ exists. Even in Reformed circles there are numerous people reading these books. Many of these people are unaware that this viewpoint conflicts with Scripture and Reformed Theology.
(Excerpt) Read more at reformed.org ...
the Church doesn’t “claim” it, it’s a fact of history, if you ever read the Fathers you would realize it.
the term “Catholic” is not in Scripture, much like Trinity isn’t either. But the One Church founded by Jesus is in Scripture and the term was begun by the pupils of the Apostles to distinguish the true Church, from other pretenders such as the Gnostics. Any one claiming to start a church is no more the Church, than someone claiming to be the President of the US, if they haven’t been elected.
Show me where “denominations” are in the Bible? St Paul condemned such a theory in 1 Corinthians!!
oh OK, thought you said you were Catholic and that would be an easy one for you. hmmm.......somtimes the answers i don’t get tell me more than when someone can answer my questions!
>>Premillennial Dysfunctionalism has displaced the Gospel as the primary focus on the nominal Christian’s life.<<
Not only is that wrong for anyone who understands what is needed for salvation but the disparaging word usage is indicative of a weak position.
Perhaps
in y’all’s farcical fantasies.
It tells you nothing but that I'm not playing your game.
I know you've seen this enough on your short sojourn on FR to be able to figure out what it means....
"Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal. "
Catholic - a person who belongs to the universal Christian church.
Any person who has accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior is part of the universal Christian Church. The RCC has corrupted the true meaning of the word.
Catholic Apostolic - of or relating to a Christian sect founded in 19th century England in anticipation of Christ’s second coming. First used in 1888
Irenaeus was NOT referring to what we now know as the RCC.
See 246
the term “Catholic” is not in Scripture, much like Trinity isn’t either.
Then you shouldn't have any trouble accepting the concept of sola scriptura, scripture alone.
If you reject that on the basis that the term itself isn't found in Scripture, then it opens the door for the legitimate rejection of all that the Catholic church claims in the way of the papacy, its preisthood, the Eucharist, the perpetual virginity of Mary, the immaculate conception, praying to saints, holy water, indulgences, annulments, and the list goes on, for that same reason.
The Catholic church is rife with doctrines and practices not found explicitly mentioned by name in Scripture and expects everyone to accept their establishment of it as authoritative on their say so.
So be consistent. Be the first Catholic to do so. Either accept sola scirptura as a legitimate doctrine based on proof texts, just like all the other doctrines the Catholic church establishes on proof texts, or reject all the other doctrines the Catholic church established on proof texts just like it rejects sola scriptura because it's *only* based on proof texts and isn't mentioned by name.
If proof texts are unreliable for one thing, it's unreliable for all.
Show me where “denominations” are in the Bible? St Paul condemned such a theory in 1 Corinthians!!
Paul condemned following men, including Peter, in 1 Corinthians 1.
Non-Catholics recognize that what exists now that calls itself the Catholic church bears precious little resemblance to what Peter helped establish in the book of the Acts of the Apostles.
I’m guessing that since the vast majority of Catholics have hardly ever cracked a Bible, much less really sat down and read it and studied it, they are not aware of that fact. So it’s easy to snow them into thinking that what the church is today is what Jesus *established*.
>>So it’s easy to snow them into thinking that what the church is today is what Jesus *established*.<<
I pray that they will get into the word for themselves because of some of the conversations we have here.
Given that we are going to go back into Glaciation long before we leave the Ice age. The water rising will happen but not until the Quaternary Ice age is over and the earth goes back to it’s normal temperatures which during earths normal temperatures we don't have any ice caps.
When Glaciation happens which there is no avoiding it oceans will recede. When we do leave the Ice age the water will come up to about the level this man is suggesting.
The Navy seems to have bought the global warming scam. Don't buy the global warming scam. It is highly unlikely we will even see the start of glaciation in our life time even know it is due between now and 2000 years.
Regardless of whatever interpretation of the end times someone has, if they don’t support Israel, God is NOT going to bless them.
I second that face-palm. We should be getting all kinds of blessing due to the heat we are taking from the Muslim world in our support of Israel, the billions we pour into Israel in the form of financial aid, and the military and intelligence protection that has ironically bankrupted our nation. Has anybody cared to ask where Israel got materials for The Bomb and for their missile defense system? When it comes to any friend in the world to Israel, what name first comes to mind? Why are there more Jews with American passports than with Israeli? Where is our blessing!! And why was the US winning wars and growing mightily in wealth and land prior to 1948, but since then we have been falling apart and can't even win a war anywhere?
Recently I was treated to a link to video of some joker name John McTernan who spoke for an hour at some 2009 Prophecy Conference. I was provided this link because I openly questioned why Dysfunctionalists keep linking natural disasters to this concept of "cursing Abraham". This video has now convinced me that Premillennial Dysfunctionalism as it is now practiced isn't your father's Dispensationalism, it is totally unhinged and quite frankly the whole presentation was from the pit of Hell. I had to read some DeMar books and listen to Riddlebarger for a couple hours to relieve me of the demons that poured out from that message.
I did write down some notes, and then I spent some time contemplating what deranged line of thinking is required to get to where John McTernan is. I think I have distilled it down to this primary error - Dysfunctionalists have bastardized Genesis 12:3 so much that it retains none of its original meaning and it now acts as the foundation of their WWGC (Who Would God Curse) jewelry set and their universal "Commerce Clause" to condemn anyone who doesn't have an obsessive Jew fetish.
Before coming out and trash this fundamental doctrine of the Dysfunctionalist, it I it responsible to reach back into time and read the commentary of it through the ages. From the early writers until well into the 19th century it was universally held to be a poetic way for God to say, "Abram, trust me when I ask you to leave your home country, I will take personally how you are treated and respond in kind." Then I started reading some commentary from the non-reformed of the 20th century and while some retained this opinion, I noticed that the gratuitous opinion that "this could be extended to the Jews" was carefully added into the commentary. Reading Dysfunctionalist commentary, they completely departed from the centuries old majority view and just claimed "This means Jews".
Furthermore, the "bless those who bless you, curse him who curses you" part was not repeated by God to Isaac yet all of the other promises were. When Isaac blessed Jacob, he personally added "bless those who bless you" but did not restore the "curse". This is further scriptural evidence that the "blessing/cursings" promise was only to Abram and was a reward for his faith.
I also noticed that modern paraphrases tend to deviate from the Hebrew and traditional English translations. When the "Bless those who Bless thee...curse the man who curses thee" line in the Hebrew ('curse' here comes in two different words), the modern translations convert the singular "the man" who curses to the plural "those" who curse. Modern Evangelicals are largely illiterate and disinterested in details, so this change from the singular to plural escapes notice yet is critical to Dysfunctionalist doctrine of the God who throws bolts of lightning down from heaven at nations when a leader "curses Abraham".
If the original words were kept, then the worst thing that could happen when Bill Clinton met with the Syrian leader in Geneva would not be the Northridge Earthquake that killed people unrelated to the Clintons as God's "curse", but would be that Bill Clinton himself would drop dead on the spot.
But even that would be an unBiblical view of curses, since God doesn't "curse" in any manner similar to what the Dysfunctionalist Tempests claim. When George H W Bush met with Arab leaders in Madrid to discuss Israel, John McTernan claimed that this "curse against Abraham" resulted in Bush's Kennebunkport being damaged by storm, and a dozen or people getting killed by the freak 1991 "Perfect Storm" that occured hours after his proclamation about Israel.
Later in the presentation he literally blamed Katrina on the actions of George W Bush because Bush somehow "cursed Abraham" by talking to the Palestinians about the fate of Israel.
When God releases His Wrath on a people, He gives them ample warnings - like the people of Ninevah received. They were told by a Prophet of God that they corporately were to repent or be corporately destroyed. Dittos with the Pharoahs of Egypt were sent Joseph then later Moses and Aaron and others, the Persian kings were sent Daniel, Edom was warned by Obadiah, Ezekile, Isaiah, Jeremiah and others warned the remaining nations that we read were judged.
This idea that Obama and Hillary are causing our financial depression because of how we treat Israel is even contrary to other Dysfunctional teachings that the US isn't mentioned in prophecy and that Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah, Joel, Zechariah, Obadiah et al were not speaking of their contemporary nations under God's judgment, but were speaking exclusively TO today's nations. IOW, the prophets of millennia ago are our warning today, and none of their prophecies talk about negotiating with the Palestinians or our conduct in UN Security Council meetings. Furthermore, they keep telling us to take things literally, and none of the "curses" involved Gulf oil spills and hurricanes.
I'm still trying to figure out why the Balfour Declaration of 1917 resulted in the Flu Pandemic that killed tens if not hundreds of millions - which pestilences are common traditional "curses".
So the Dysfunctionalists have hijacked a passage, claimed that a personal promise to Abram is magically extended to a nation God has judged out of existence, that the actions of one person will decimate the innocent, that God now destroys nations capriciously without first sending a prophet and listing the charges, and He uses the stock market as evidence that "I am God". (Yes, John has claimed that since we haven't had a damaging year of natural disasters aka "Acts of God" we are now cursed by God with dramatic falling stock prices (something man actually does control)
Given the Scriptural, doctrinal, logical and empirical refutation to the claim "Curse those who curse you, and bless those who bless you" of Genesis 12:3 somehow is relevant to unnamed nations against a judged and dispersed people, I can't see any reason to pretend that there is this Raiders of the Lost Ark sort of Voo Doo that returns a "recognition of Palestinians" as a reason to destroy billions in personal property. But given that the Dysfunctionalists must get louder and shriller in order to stay in the news, the bookstores and be choice speakers on the lecture circuit, I can only imagine it getting even worse.
And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Matthew 16:18
What do you know - I am Catholic and when I cracked open my Bible look what I found!
Amen! And thanks to Daniel1212 for clarifying just how far a Roman Catholic is expected to go in their fealty to the Pope.
“It is error to believe that, if the Pope were a reprobate and an evil man and consequently a member of the devil, he has no power over the faithful.” Council of Constance, Condemnation of Errors, against Wycliffe, Session VIII, and Hus: Session XV; DNZ:621, 617, 588)
“Even if the Pope were Satan incarnate, we ought not to raise up our heads against him, but calmly lie down to rest on his bosom.” St. Catherine of Siena, SCS, p. 201-202, p. 222, (quoted in Apostolic Digest, by sedevacantist Michael Malone, Book 5:
“The Book of Obedience”, Chapter 1: “There is No Salvation Without Personal Submission to the Pope”)
The "ferocity" with which you defend the 180-year-old rapture theory is used to compensate for your admitted lack of substantive argument. You cannot cite passages from scripture or opinions from the fathers on pretrib rapture, so you substitute rude graphics, loud fonts, and fantasy maps. Your quoted words above indicate that you support or oppose theological argument based upon its usefulness to the political requirements for modern Israel.
>> And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Matthew 16:18<<
Now pray tell what does that have to do with the RCC?
Biblical Israel vs. Modern Israel
Clip & Save.
Peter still retained his office as leader of the Apostles despite his rebuke. Paul simply did what many good Catholics have done throughout the ages to correct wayward popes. Every pope since the the 1960s has been quite severely and repeatedly corrected by traditionalist Catholics.
Well, so much for the "Papal Infallibility" dogma...pffffttt. Next?
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