Posted on 10/31/2011 1:04:53 PM PDT by RnMomof7
On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther tacked up 95 theses on the church door at Wittenberg. With this act, he hoped to provoke a discussion among the scholars about the abuses of the indulgences by the Roman Catholic Church. He was not trying to create a public furor by any means, but within a fortnight, these theses had spread through the country like wildfire. The last thing Luther had in mind was to start some kind of major controversy, but nevertheless major controversy did begin.
From the discussions at Wittenberg, the disputations began to accelerate and escalate. Copies of the theses reached Rome and critical meetings were scheduled with the young monk. In these debates, Luther was maneuvered into proclaiming publicly that he had questions about the infallibility of church councils and also that he thought that it was possible that the pope could err. In 1520 a papal encyclical was issued which condemned Martin Luther as a heretic. Luther burned the document in a public bonfire and his defiance before the church was now a matter of record.
In response, Martin Luther picked up his pen to challenge the entire penitential system of the Roman Catholic Church, which undermined in principle the free remission of sins that is ours in the gospel. By doing so, he was unswervingly advocating his commitment to sola fide, the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
In 1521, Luther was summoned to the Imperial Diet, an authoritative meeting that involved the princes of the church, called by the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire to be held in the city of Worms in Germany. Luther was an outlaw. For him to appear at the Diet was to risk his very life; therefore, he was given safe conduct by the Emperor to attend. With a few friends, Luther traveled from Wittenberg to Worms. The eyewitnesses of that episode tell us that when Luther’s little covered wagon appeared around the corner of the bend, there were lookouts posted in the church tower at Worms. All the people were agog waiting for the arrival of this notorious person. When Luther’s caravan was sighted, people were throwing their hats in the air, blowing trumpets, and creating all the fanfare of the arrival of the hero. It was the 16th century answer to a ticker-tape parade.
Things, however, became very solemn in a hurry because the next day he appeared before the Diet. His books were stacked on a table in the room, and he was asked and ordered to recant of his writings. This surprised Luther because he thought he was going to have an opportunity to defend his writings; but the only question really of any importance that was asked of him was this: "Are these your writings?" And when he said yes, they said, "Are you ready to recant of them?"
Hollywood has their version of Luther standing there boldly with his fist in the air saying, "Here I stand!" and so on. But instead he dropped his chin on his chest and muttered something that nobody could understand, so they asked him to speak up. "What did you say?" He said, "May I have 24 hours to think about it." And so Luther was granted a reprieve of 24 hours to return to his room to contemplate the seriousness of this occasion.
The prayer that Luther wrote in that ensuing 24-hour period was one of the most moving prayers I have ever read in my life. In that prayer, Luther cried out for God in his sense of total loneliness fearing that God had abandoned him, and proclaimed, "O Lord, I am Thine, and the cause is Thine, give me the courage to stand."
And on the morrow, Luther was called once again back to the court and was told to reply to the question. He said to the Diet, "Unless I am convinced by sacred scripture or by evident reason, I cannot recant, for my conscience is held captive by the Word of God, and to act against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me." And with that there was an instant uproar.
The Emperor himself later indicated his regret that he even gave Luther a safe conduct, and immediately put a new price on his head. As Luther was leaving the city, his friends staged a kidnapping to protect him and took him away in a fast horse through the forest. They hid him for a year in Wartburg at the castle disguised as a knight. During that year, Luther undertook the task of translating the Bible from the biblical languages into German. And that perhaps was his most important legacy of that time - that he made the Bible available to the common people. And with that the Reformation was born.
—R.C. Sproul
You are throwing a red herring. Corruption deserved reform, not a revolution and the creation of a new religion.
Protestantism has nothing in common with the Christianity that emerged from Judaism. Or the Christianity of the Roman martyrs.
It’s objectively a revisionist form of Christian faith that would have been foreign to 1st and 2nd century believers.
There’s not much difference from the Mormon belief in the Great Apostasy and the idea that authentic Christianity went underground early on only to be magically rediscovered by the 16th century’s Joseph Smith and Brigham Young (namely Martin Luther and John Calvin).
Anyone who wants to know the truth already knows that anyone who even tried to sell indulgences was condemned in advance by the Catholic Church and that Luther laughed and bragged about spreading the lie that the selling of indulgences was a common practice.
You obviously agree with lies that you like the same way those folks who believe in the Al Gore Warming Scam agree with lies that further their cause. Now I know where you're coming from and that you're a waste of time. Enjoy repeating lies all you like but don't complain about the consequences.
That’s like denying the holocaust. Trying to discuss this with militant people like you is futile. It’s like discussing something with a liberal who will ignore facts to argue for their “team”. Again - I am not attacking the modern era Catholic church. But the past is the past and indulgences were sold and and there was rappant corruption and evil in the Catholic Church in those days. Have a nice evening.
Faith so simple even a child can receive it - why the Lord says that, "unless we become like little children, we will miss it."
he said Who, but the devil, has granted such license of wresting the words of the holy Scripture? Who ever read in the Scriptures, that my body is the same as the sign of my body? or, that is is the same as it signifies? What language in the world ever spoke so? It is only then the devil, that imposes upon us by these fanatical men. --> only Calvin/Zwingli turned around what Christ had said
Remember that even Martin luther weighed in in favor of the True Presence in the Eucharist when he said:
All three accounts of the institution of the Lord's Supper in the Gospels (Matthew 26:26-29; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:14-23) explicitly state that Jesus took BREAD, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to his disciples saying, "Take, eat; this [i.e., this BREAD, which I have just blessed and broken and am now giving to you] is my body." Jesus uses similar language in referring to "the cup" (of wine) as "his blood."... Perhaps the most explicit expression of this truth, however, is found in 1 Cor. 10:16-17, where Paul writes: "The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread." Paul clearly says here that we all "partake" of "BREAD" when we receive the Lord's Supper--even as we also partake of and "participate in" the true body of Christ. And he says that we all "partake" of the wine (the cup), even as we also partake of the true blood of Christ. Similarly, in 1 Cor. 11:26, Paul says: "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." Paul expressly states here ........................that those who eat this bread and drink this cup are also partaking of the true body and blood of Christ. So "real" is this participation in Christ's body and blood, in fact, that (according to Paul) those who partake of the bread and wine "in an unworthy manner" are actually guilty of "profaning the body and blood of the Lord" (1 Cor. 11:27). (Partaking of the Lord's Supper "in a worthy manner," of course, is not something that we "do" or "accomplish" on the basis of our "personal holiness" or "good works." It means receiving God's free and gracious gifts of life and forgiveness offered in the Lord's Supper in true repentance produced by the work of the Spirit through God's Law and in true faith in Christ and his promises produced by God's Spirit through the Gospel).
Who, but the devil, has granted such license of wresting the words of the holy Scripture?
Who ever read in the Scriptures, that my body is the same as the sign of my body?
or, that is is the same as it signifies? What language in the world ever spoke so?
It is only then the devil, that imposes upon us by these fanatical men.
| "Calvinism is the Gospel and to teach Calvinism is in fact to preach the Gospel." Arthur C. Custance, The Sovereignty of Grace, 1979. |
| "Calvinism is evangelicalism in its purest and only stable expression." B.B. Warfield, Calvin and Augustine, ed. Samuel G. Craig, 1956. |
| "We believe with the great Baptist preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, that Calvinism is just another name for Christianity." John H. Gerstner, Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth: A Critique of Dispensationalism, 1991. |
thanks for pointing out the lack of the word “alone”...
rom after the first generation, orthodox Lutherans it's all downhill
To explain: You have the first generation namely Lutheran sticking close to orthodoxy with the Lutherans holding to the True Presence in the Eucharist, to Baptismal regeneration etc.
your own cult splits and re-splits to justify its gay marriage etc. theology it's incredible
When ya point fingers at others.. there are always some pointing back at you.
No wonder as the sub-sub-sub-cults formed since then have left Christianity completely
to join the OPC, he must reject all of God's teachings and stop being a follower of Christ and become a follower of Calvin.
For Calvin teaches that one does not need to believe in Christ but one is part of an elite brahmin caste.
To become a member of the OrthodoPresbyterian Cult, one must throw out scripture and adopt the 14-page excerpted version of scripture with the colored pictures that the OPC believes in.
To become a member of the Orthodo PresbyterianCult, one must Acording to the OPC OrthoPresbyterianC: "Christians should not celebrate the Seder or other Jewish festivals. "
The followers of Machen, the OPC, disregard scripture where it calls men to repent, have faith, convert, and persevere. Instead they insist on some kind of non-scriptural preservation which is not only non-scriptural but also disagrees with the beliefs of their hero, St. Augustine who believed in perseverance of the saints, not preservation. Augustine did not believe in Calvin's understanding of the "perseverance of the saints,"
the OPC's theory that man can never lose his salvation, no matter what he does, so when they read 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and Galatians 5:19-21 the OPC believes that if anyone commits any such sin, there is no repentence for the followers of Calvin. Their deity will not take repentence, so the followers of Calvin will say that the person never was Christian at all!
To answer, they twist their weasel-words as
First between true and false conversion. The Bible recognizes that not everyone who says he believes in Christ really doesVoilą! (by the way, that means "see there" in French) -- the followers of Calvin-Machen use their rubber dictionaries to say "Oh, they never were Christian in the first place!"
Salvation of Infants Who DieThe OPC believes that God pre-damns infants to eternal hell. This isn't the Christian God of Love.
The Confession entertains the idea that at least some infants who die in infancy and some others "who are incapable of being outwardly called" are among the elect.
However, the Confession does not say that all such infants, etc., are saved.
| 12 “Therefore, son of man, say to your people, ‘If someone who is righteous disobeys, that person’s former righteousness will count for nothing. And if someone who is wicked repents, that person’s former wickedness will not bring condemnation. The righteous person who sins will not be allowed to live even though they were formerly righteous.’ 13 If I tell a righteous person that they will surely live, but then they trust in their righteousness and do evil, none of the righteous things that person has done will be remembered; they will die for the evil they have done. 14 And if I say to a wicked person, ‘You will surely die,’ but they then turn away from their sin and do what is just and right— 15 if they give back what they took in pledge for a loan, return what they have stolen, follow the decrees that give life, and do no evil—that person will surely live; they will not die. 16 None of the sins that person has committed will be remembered against them. They have done what is just and right; they will surely live. |
| John 4:42 describes Christ as "the Savior of the world," 1 John 2:2 Christ "is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world." 1 Timothy 4:10 God is "the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe." |
| >What Calvin did was this. He took what is one of the oldest and most perilous directives of mankind, the sense of Fate. He isolated it, and he made it supreme, by fitting it, with the kneading of a powerful mind, into the scheme which Christian men still traditionally associated with the holiness and authority of their ancestral religion. God had become Man, and God had become Man to redeem mankind. That was no part of the old idea of Inevitable Fate. On the contrary, it was a relief from that pagan nightmare. We of the Faith say that the Incarnation was intended to release us from such a pagan nightmare. Well, Calvin accepted the Incarnation, but he forced it to fit in with the old pagan horror of compulsion: “Ananke.” He reintroduced the Inexorable. Yes, God had become Man and had died to save mankind; but only mankind in such numbers and persons as He had chosen to act for. The idea of the Inexorable remained. The merits of Christ were imputed, and no more. God was Causation, and Causation is one immutable whole. A man was damned or saved; and it was not of his doing. The recognition of evil as equal with good, which rapidly becomes the worship of evil (the great Manichean heresy, which has roots as old as mankind; the permanent motive of Fear) was put forward by Calvin in a strange new form. He did not indeed oppose, as had the Manichean, two equal principles of Good and of Evil. He put forward only one principle, God. But to that One Principle he ascribed all our suffering, and, for most of us, necessary and eternal suffering. Again, the Catholic Church had called the soul of man immortal. Calvin accepted that doctrine; but under his hands it becomes an immortality of doom, and for the few who shall have doom to beatitude, doom it yet is, as doom is is to the myriads for whom it shall mean despair. |
Yet your Calvinist group, RN, rejects that saved by faith — as it holds to Covenant philosophy and to a Brahminical upper caste elite “elect”, pre-destined by Karma to be saved. Your group’s philosophy has no room for faith as it is not “faith” but pre-programmed actions that your group says happens
That doesn't sound like the Lord discriminates among us but that He does respect our opinions of Him and will honor our choice at the Day of Judgment; He just knows who will and who will not.
I not only was educated in Catholic schools..including college..but I lectored, was on the liturgy committee, taught CCD and gave talks on Catholic women's retreats.. as a good Catholic I had 7 children.. and then something wondrous happened.. I was saved by grace by my Lord and Savior.. I pray that the same Holy Spirit that led me to repentance and that brought me to the cross for salvation..leads you there too... (A Catholic asked that I post my testimony on my home page..it is there to be read)
The problem has been that the vocal posters on FR's RF have been the hyper-Calvinists, so unfortunately most non-Calvinists see only them as representative of Calvinism
With their claim of "the elect" extending to sole inheritors of salvation, certainly conflicts with their support of missions.
Thanks for the ping. This showdown seems to mirror many Biblical stories. First came prayer, then came the Lord, then came greatness.
the Scriptures predict a great falling away from the Faith right before the end, in my opinion, we are witnessing this falling away right before our eyes.
no one who is truly “in Christ” would have hate in their heart and attack the Church with obvious lies.
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