RE: Vladimir998 putting heretics in their place is some good stuff.
AS if you did not notice, I asked vladimir to define the word “heretic” for me. He has thus far, not done so.
He simply restates and reuses the word as if his saying so makes it so.
Maybe you can be more helpful and define it for us.
Thank you both for fighting the good fight. I’m betting that you both will agree with me that our “fight” is not against the freepers here on this thread who call themselves Catholics, but rather it is against the evil one. I have prayed all day that I might be able to find some common ground between us and them ..... common ground in at least the basic message of the Gospel (the Good News of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ and His Grace). None of them was willing to testify as to what their belief is other than to tell us that it is because it is and always has been so and we Protestants are heretics because we aren’t Catholic and thus not able to understand what Christianity really is.
Let’s face it, they very well may not know what the scriptures teach, they may not have ever had a “conversation” with Jesus or felt the comfort, and strength of the Holy Spirit. They may know only scattered verses that are tossed out at Mass rather than the excitement of delving deep into precept-by-precept study of Gods living Word. They may only know what their Priests and Bishops and Popes want them to know. They may in some cases not be capable of quoting the Word because of some evil blocking them from doing so. That saddens me, because despite everything, I still can see some good deep down in them, or they would not be FReepers.
Today I came very close to understanding something that has bothered me for many years. I never could understand how the Roman Catholic church could have labeled Protestants as heretics just because they would not bow to the Pope and then actually burned so many Protestant martyrs at the stake even as they were declaring their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. I almost could understand this kind of evil coming from the men at the top, but what about the masses of average people who were cheering them on as these saints burned alive. Today, I came very close to seeing how it happened. I saw how these masses of people closed their hearts and minds to the Word of God, and blindly following the teaching and orders of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, all the while stubbornly saying, “we are right because we are right, because we are Catholics, and that is just the way it is, and we won’t listen to anyone who says it isn’t so.”