I noticed that after I clicked to post. But it also provides an opportunity for others to investigate the why’s and how’s. I believe that is our purpose on these threads.
We get this incessant drumbeat of cultic propaganda from the Roman Catholics that does little to bring us closer to Christ. it is their constant repetitious, redundant promotion of the organization and its hierarchy, without giving much thought to preaching the gospel of Christ crucified and raised up from the grave. The good news that His death on the cross was a full and complete payment to God for our sinfulness, if we would just believe on him.
We are promised the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth. He promises a comforter and mediator, and denies that we need do anything, nay, cannot do anything to save ourselves. It is entirely his work, as Paul says “not of (our own) works, lest any man should boast” (Eph 2:9.)
There is no woman pulling on Jesus’s ear so that we can get a leg up and gain some advantage with God. There are no dead “ Saints” who take us by the hand and keep us safe from different challenges in our lives. There is no man-made institution governed by fallible men who can decide on our future habitat in the afterlife.There is only the Holy Spirit, who quickens our heart and leads us by still waters.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The Old Testament and the New Testament begin with those words. God knew us from before the foundations of the earth. He created us in his image, as spirits, but He gave us mortal bodies. He gave us a choice, and the first man made a wrong one. God made NO mistakes when he made man, and his plan of salvation and expiation began long before this orb came into being. He did not want a being to act robotic, nor did he want anything in his creation to bow to him by command.
We have a choice. We can follow man, or we can follow God. He wants us to have a desire to follow him and to serve him. But, that burden is light. It doesn’t require us to jump through hoops, bow down to some craven image on a cross in a gilt Temple of oppression, nor are confess our sentence to a guy in a closet. Instead he tells us to confess our sons one to another, and the purpose of the closet is for prayer. We are not to look for approval by man.
We have only to look toward God. We only need a simple faith as declared by Jesus, but foretold for all of history. We only need to believe that Christ Jesus died, and lives again, so we can live forever and ever, amen.
Believe it or not!