Posted on 06/27/2014 3:58:36 PM PDT by NYer
Two prominent Fort Worth-based Christian ministers led a delegation of Evangelical Christian leaders to Rome to meet privately with Pope Francis.
James and Betty Robison, co-hosts of the Life Today television program, and Kenneth Copeland, co-host of Believer’s Voice of Victory, met the Roman Pontiff at the Vatican on Tuesday. The meeting lasted almost three hours and included a private luncheon with Pope Francis.
Mr. Robison told the Fort Worth Star Telegram, “This meeting was a miracle…. This is something God has done. God wants his arms around the world. And he wants Christians to put his arms around the world by working together.”
Mr. Robison said he was impressed by Pope Francis’ humility and courtesy to the visiting delegation of Evangelical Protestant Christian leaders.
In a written statement, Mr. Robison said he believes “the prayers of earnest Christians helped lead to the choice of Pope Francis.” He described Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Argentine Archbishop chosen as Pope, as “a humble man…filled with such love for the poor, downtrodden…”
In addition to Mrs. Betty Robison, the high-profile Protestant delegation included Kenneth Copeland, co-founder of Kenneth Copeland Ministries in Newark, TX; Reverend Geoff Tunnicliff, CEO of the World Evangelical Alliance; Rev. Brian Stiller and Rev. Thomas Schirrmacher, also from the World Evangelical Alliance; and Rev. John Arnott and his wife, Carol, co-founders of Partners for Harvest ministries in Toronto, Canada. Gloria Copeland did not travel to Rome because of a previously scheduled commitment.
The ecumenical meeting in Rome was organized by Episcopal Bishop Tony Palmer. Rev. Palmer is an ordained bishop in the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches, a break-away alliance of charismatic Anglican-Episcopal churches. Bishop Palmer is also the Director of The Ark Community, an international interdenominational Convergent Church online community, and is a member of the Roman Catholic Ecumenical Delegation for Christian Unity and Reconciliation.
Bishop Palmer developed a friendship with Pope Francis when the future Roman Pontiff was a Catholic official in Argentina. Prior to becoming a CEEC bishop, Rev. Palmer was the director of the Kenneth Copeland Ministries’ office in South Africa. He is married to an Italian Roman Catholic woman. He later moved to Italy and began working to reconcile Roman Catholics and Protestants. Kenneth Copeland Ministries was one of Mr. Palmer’s first financial contributors over 10 years ago in support of his ecumenical work in Italy.
Earlier this year, Pope Francis called Bishop Palmer to invite him to his residence in Vatican City. During the meeting, Bishop Palmer suggested that the Pope record a personal greeting on Mr. Palmer’s iPhone to be delivered to Kenneth Copeland. Mr. Copeland showed the Papal video greeting to a conference of Protestant ministers who were meeting at Mr. Copeland’s Eagle Mountain International Church near Fort Worth, TX. In the video, Pope Francis expressed his desire for Christian unity with Protestants.
Later, James Robison telecasted the video on his daily TV program, Life Today. “The pope, in the video, expressed a desire for Protestants and Catholics to become what Jesus prayed for — that Christians would become family and not be divided,” Mr. Robison said the response to the video was very positive, and that Pope Francis asked Bishop Palmer whether a meeting could be arranged with Evangelical Protestants seeking Christian unity in the world.
In his written statement released after the Papal meeting, Mr. Robison said he was “blessed to be part of perhaps an unprecedented moment between evangelicals and the Catholic Pope.” He described the Protestant delegation’s private meeting with the leader of the Roman Catholic Church as “an intimate circle of prayerful discussion and lunch to discuss not only seeing Jesus’ prayer answered, but that every believer would become a bold, joy-filled witnesses for Christ.
In describing the ecumenical gathering as a miracle, Mr. Robison said, “This is something God has done. God wants his arms around the world. And he wants Christians to put his arms around the world by working together.”
During the luncheon on Tuesday, Mr. Robison got a high-five from Pope Francis after the Pope and Protestant guests talked about the need for all people to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. According to the Life Today host, the Roman Pontiff did not know what a high-five was until Bishop Palmer explained it to him in Italian. Mr. Robison said, “The Pope made it very clear that he wanted every believer to become Spirit-filled, joy-filled witnesses.”
Mr. Robison said Pope Francis had written recently, “Too many Catholics look like they’ve been to Lent with no Easter. It’s a mistake for them to look like they’ve been to a funeral” as he challenged Catholics to witness and never try to control the Holy Spirit, but yield to Him.
Mr. Robison said he received a divine call from God to seek Christian unity while he was hospitalized several years ago with a serious staph infection following hip surgery. Robison recalled, “[I] was so weak I could not lift a cup of water to my lips…God got my full attention…He spoke to me through Isaiah 58:6-12 and I saw the importance of living in freedom, touching the suffering, the hungry, poor, and downtrodden. I recognized the promise that our prayers would be answered quickly and we would become a free-flowing stream and a well-watered garden, restoring the foundations upon which we must build. During that time God instructed me to focus my attention on Jesus’ prayer and encouraging others to begin fulfilling it through us in our day.”
During that time, he said, he was impressed by a prayer of Jesus in John 17:21, pleading that all Christian believers be one. “We’ve tried to focus on being an answer to Jesus’ prayer,” Robison said. “We want to see Jesus’ prayer for unity answered in our day.”
Aware that the meeting with the Pope will be troublesome among staunch Protestants, Mr. Robison said he and the other visiting Evangelical Christian leaders talked about diversity and their belief that Roman Catholics and Protestants could work together without compromising their beliefs.
“The world is suffering,” said Robison. “We as Christians have too much love to share without fighting one another.”
Mr. Robison said he and other “respected Evangelical leaders and Spirit-filled Catholics began meeting together to pray for God’s will to be done and to bring true believers together in supernatural unity….We have been commanded to love God with all of our heart and our neighbors as ourselves. The enemy has kept many Christians from loving one another as Christ loves us and have failed to recognize the importance of supernatural unity even with all of the unique diversity.”
Mr. Robison, whose ministry digs water wells and supplies food for impoverished people in third-world nations, recounted that he was christened as a fatherless boy in an Episcopal Church. As an adult, he joined the Southern Baptist Church. In the 1980s, he became one of the first prominent Southern Baptist ministers to openly proclaim he had received the baptism o
SLC looks up to Rome...
I don't think we can ever transcend Joseph Smith or consider him to be a valued personality, but now we'll move on.I don't think you'll see that among believers in the faith, because there are too many other things that came from himthat are the reasons why we do what we do and we are what we are. That there are unanswered questions, to be sure.That there are things that I'm as anxious as the next guy to learn more detail on, I really want to know. But in the interim,it really doesn't, doesn't trouble me.We're in the religion-making business, as you intimated earlier, only for a short time, I mean, compared to theChristian church, which has been at this for a couple of millennia. We're about halfway to Nicaea.And so, and so in that sense — I remember a very tender moment. I was speaking with — I've been invitedto the Salt Lake Theological Seminary, basically an Evangelical seminary, to discuss a book I had done on Jesus.And they had read it, and they wanted me to come and just respond to questions.And it was, it was a very enjoyable couple of hours.The very last question that was asked by one of my friends there was this one.He said, 'Bob, what can we do for you?'And I, I wasn't ready for that question. I said, 'What do you mean?'He said, 'What can we, as Evangelicals, do for our Mormon friends?'And I, I guess my mind could have gone a hundred different ways, but what I came back with was this.I said, 'Boy, I appreciate you asking that. I don't think I've ever been asked that.'But, but I said, 'Try this. Cut us a little slack, will you? Give us a little time.We're in the religion-making business, and this takes time. It takes centuries.And, and trying to explain the faith and articulate the faith, that doesn't come over night.We've really only been about that for 20 or 30 years.'
Let's try some easy math:
There are approximately 1.2 billion Catholics world wide;
If merely 1% of them 'ask' Mary for help just once each day;
that means that 12 million separate prayers are headed Mary's direction every day.
Given that there are 86,400 seconds per day... (24 hours times 60 minutes times 60 seconds)
...that means that Mary has to handle approximately 139 'requests' per second!
Purty good fer someone NOT 'devine'!
OH oh!
You’re in trouble now!
I’ll get in trouble; too; for mixing metaphors - but your Freepmail will be ringing off the hook!
What ELSE would you expect?
Pentecostals came from Protestants which came from Catholics.
Lotsa common DNA in there!
Many have run in Catholics circles for a number of years and there is a lot of their theology that is unscriptural but they know what they've experienced and you can't tell them otherwise.
I’ve been in trouble here for awhile...lol.
He claims to be a believing Christian, as do many people.
Deception within the church
http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/kcopeland.html
Let Us Reason Ministries - Ken Copeland
At what point in your life were you drawn away from the Catholic Church and by which formula?
FOTFLOL!!!!
Nobody worked on me and I wasn’t drawn away from the church.
I left of my own volition and years later came to accept Christ and was born again.
At that point, when I started going back to church, I began attending the Catholic church I was raised in. I also had gone out and bought a Bible, not because anyone told me to, but because I felt the need to.
And I started reading it on my own, not because anyone told be to but because I was hungry to know the word. I was not coached or *discipled* about those things. I just had the conviction that I needed to do that, from the Holy Spirit.
As I read and attended the Catholic church for months, I saw the disparity between what Scripture taught and what the Catholic church taught. And it grew wider the more time went on.
And I was not being coached or mentored by any Protestants and told what to do.
I began attending an Evangelical church on the invitation of a friend and vacillated between the two for several more months until I made the break with the Catholic church.
Someone who is not born again and does not have the Holy Spirit residing in them cannot understand the leading of him in ones life and the enlightening work He does in the heart and mind.
So, no. No formulas. Formulas may lure people from one denomination to another, but they save no one.
He meets Kenneth Copeland who is the king of the “ God wants you rich “ crowd. If you ever hear him or his friend Frederick Price speak you know they do not read scripture under the Holy Spirit. Who advised the Pope on this decision? Yikes
HMMMmmm...
So THIS is where MORMONism gets it from!
Do you understand what, "one faith", means? I don't think Pope Francis does.
We have to start somewhere. If a Southern Baptist is pro-life, and willing to pray with other Christians for an end to abortion, then they should all stand together and pray.
It would be foolish for Catholics to say, others of good will, even non-believers, can’t stand together against evil.
Because I see it happening in growing parishes.
That’s not what I meant and you know it.
You were "born again" on the day you were baptized in the Catholic Church. Scripture is clear that baptism is much more than a mere symbol.
In Acts 2:38, Peter tells us, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." When Paul was converted, he was told, "And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on his name" (Acts 22:16).
At that point, when I started going back to church, I began attending the Catholic church I was raised in. I also had gone out and bought a Bible, not because anyone told me to, but because I felt the need to.
Was this because your family did not have a bible at home? I see nothing strange or unusual about purchasing a bible.
** I see nothing strange or unusual about purchasing a bible. **
My friend just had a Jerusalem Bible stolen from her car (hardback).
She now has a paperback version — and I personally like the Jerusalem Bible. Used almost all over the world.
I’m Catholic. Sometimes I watch James Robison in the morning. He’s strongly Pro-Life and you can tell the sufferings of those without the basic necessities of life hurts his heart. I like him. I don’t know Kenneth Copeland as well though I sometimes watch him and his family members on TV. I’m glad to see him listening very intently to Francis in one of the pictures.
Purchased mine through EWTN. It came with that lovely cover designed for Mother Angelica.
On June 25th, the Pope continued to develop the theme of ecclesiality by explaining the positive and indispensable role of the Church in the believer’s life in Christ. Basically, the Pope emphasized that just as no one comes to faith in Christ apart from the Church, so it is impossible to be a true Christian apart from belonging to the Church. Read More. He continues, here.
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