From Fundamentalist Baptist to Catholic – Steve Wilson’s Story

http://www.catholic-convert.com/ ^ | February 26, 2015 | Steve Wilson

[NKP_Vet]

Archbishop Fulton Sheen once wrote: “There are not over a hundred people in the United State who hate the Roman Catholic Church; there are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church.”

I was one of those who hated because of what I wrongly believed about the Catholic Church. The reason I had these beliefs was due to being told what to believe about the Catholic Church from those who were told what to believe about the Catholic Church. No one was willing to find out what the bottom line was concerning the Catholic Church. Everything said about the Church was taken as truth while it seemed no one was delving into what the truth really was.

What about these Catholics? They worshipped Mary. They had a religion but not a relationship with Jesus Christ. They said they believed in God but really their belief couldn’t be the same, could it? The Bible says in James 2:19 KJV “Thou believest that there is one God; Thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble”.

So do Catholics have a belief such as the devils? When most Catholics are asked if they have been “born again” or “have accepted Christ as their Savior”, their main response is “I believe in God” or “I am a good person”, or “I’m Catholic”. Also, they have all these rituals, Saints, Statues and what about the Pope is he really standing in for God? Another big item, are they cannibals when they eat the bread and drink the wine during communion? Why do they leave Jesus on the cross, don’t they realize Jesus has risen from the dead?

For the rest of Steve’s story, click at link.

[2nd amendment mama]

Oops...for some reason my source didn't show up. Here it is again: Source: Christian-Jewish Relations: The Inquisition

[verga]

Now that is fun ny, and it’s funny because it is true.

[verga]

All of the Nazi anti-Jewish practices were pioneered by the Catholic church before Luther was born

Actually much of what they got was from the Protestant Margaret Sanger, the racist founder of Planned Parenthood.

[Crim]

Sorry...but in this thread...catholics have already branded as cultists, pegans, vipers, infidals....

Not even christian in the eyes of a protestant.

But NOW you say we ARE christian?

So which is it...are we christians or not?

[verga]

Cain and Able were not true brothers; they had different ‘fathers.’

Genesis [4:1] Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, "I have produced a man with the help of the LORD." [4:2] Next she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground.

Not seeing it, Adam was father to both.

[2nd amendment mama]

Don’t change the subject. Catholics were jew-haters long before Luther was born!!! I was just pointing out one instance. And I didn’t call you Christians - that was the title of the article. I use facts to counter your emotionalism of Luther hatred. Try sticking with the facts.

[Resettozero]

Still looking for a name, a date, place... a trace.

If you don’t wish to or can’t answer the specific question, that’s fine. It should be clear what I’m asking.

I have answered your question repeatedly, with my best answer this morning. You are in denial that I have answered you for the fourth time.

Names, dates, places? Perhaps another FReeper can or will provide them to you.

You are correct in saying it has been clear to me from the beginning what you have repeatedly asked.

In one post, I called it badgering me to say something other than what I have to say. I was informed that badgering a FReeper by continual refusal to accept either the answer or no answer was once against these Religion forum guidelines. Let's see if it still is.

[Biggirl]

Standing firm in faith to the Lordship of Jesus Christ also means not rehashing old battles that must in this present time be put aside for the sake of peace among the believers.

[editor-surveyor]

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Important posts always seem to get that number!

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[Crim]

“Don’t change the subject. Catholics were jew-haters long before Luther was born!!!’

And yet Luthers teachings where laced all throughout Nazi’s propaganda....not catholic teachings.

” I was just pointing out one instance. And I didn’t call you Christians - that was the title of the article.”

Ah....so we are arent christians....yet you already said christians before...I notice you reverted back to “catholic” this time though....smooth...(not really)

“I use facts to counter your emotionalism of Luther hatred. Try sticking with the facts.”

Luther hatred?....yeah I have a problem with Jew haters.

And I already posted the relevent FACTS....get back to me when you can disprove them.

Here they are again.

British historian Paul Johnson has called On the Jews and their Lies the “first work of modern anti-Semitism, and a giant step forward on the road to the Holocaust.” (Johnson, A History of the Jews, p. 242.)

While some Lutherans deny the charge, the Nazis did cite Luther’s treatise to justify the Final Solution (Egil Grislis, “Martin Luther and the Jews,” Consensus 27 (2001) No. 1:64.).

The line of “anti-Semitic descent” from Luther to Hitler is “easy to draw,” according to American historian Lucy Dawidowicz. In her “The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945”, she writes that both Luther and Hitler were obsessed by the “demonologized universe” inhabited by Jews, with Hitler asserting that the later Luther, the author of On the Jews and Their Lies was the ‘real Luther’.

Professor Robert Michael, Professor Emeritus of European History at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, has argued that Luther scholars who try to tone down Luther’s views on the Jews ignore the murderous implications of his antisemitism. Michael argues that there is a “strong parallel” between Luther’s ideas and the anti-Semitism of most German Lutherans throughout the Holocaust. Like the Nazis, Luther mythologized the Jews as evil, he writes. They could be saved only if they converted to Christianity, but their hostility to the idea made it inconceivable (Robert Michael, “Luther, Luther Scholars, and the Jews,” Encounter 46:4 (Autumn 1985), pp. 339-56.).

Luther’s sentiments were widely echoed in the Germany of the 1930s, particularly within the Nazi party. Hitler’s Education Minister, Bernhard Rust, was quoted by the Völkischer Beobachter as saying that: “Since Martin Luther closed his eyes, no such son of our people has appeared again. It has been decided that we shall be the first to witness his reappearance ... I think the time is past when one may not say the names of Hitler and Luther in the same breath. They belong together; they are of the same old stamp [Schrot und Korn]” (Volkischer Beobachter, August 25, 1933 cited in Steigmann-Gall, Richard. The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1991-1945. Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 136-7.).

Hans Hinkel, leader of the Luther League’s magazine Deutsche Kultur-Wacht, and of the Berlin chapter of the Kampfbund, paid tribute to Luther in his acceptance speech as head of both the Jewish section and the film department of Goebbel’s Chamber of Culture and Propaganda Ministry. “Through his acts and his spiritual attitude, he began the fight which we will wage today; with Luther, the revolution of German blood and feeling against alien elements of the Volk was begun. To continue and complete his Protestantism, nationalism must make the picture of Luther, of a German fighter, live as an example above the barriers of confession for all German blood comrades.”
(Steigmann-Gall 2003, p. 137.).

According to Daniel Goldhagen, Bishop Martin Sasse, a leading Protestant churchman, published a compendium Luther’s writings shortly after Kristallnacht in which Sasse “applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day, writing in the introduction, “On November 10, 1938, on Luther’s birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany.” The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words “of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews.” (Bernd Nellessen, “Die schweigende Kirche: Katholiken und Judenverfolgung,” in Büttner (ed), Die Deutchschen und die Jugendverfolg im Dritten Reich, p. 265, cited in Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners (Vintage, 1997)).

William Nichols, Professor of Religious Studies, recounts, “At his trial in Nuremberg after the Second World War, Julius Streicher, the notorious Nazi propagandist, editor of the scurrilous antisemitic weekly, Der Stürmer, argued that if he should be standing there arraigned on such charges, so should Martin Luther. Reading such passages, it is hard not to agree with him. Luther’s proposals read like a program for the Nazis.” (William Nichols, Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1995), p. 271).

In the course of the Luthertag (Luther Day) festivities, the Nazis emphasized their connection to Luther as being both nationalist revolutionaries and the heirs of the German traditionalist past. An article in the Chemnitzer Tageblatt stated that “[t]he German Volk are united not only in loyalty and love for the Fatherland, but also once more in the old German beliefs of Luther [Lutherglauben]; a new epoch of strong, conscious religious life has dawned in Germany.” Richard Steigmann-Gall wrote in his 2003 book The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945:

The leadership of the Protestant League espoused a similar view. Fahrenhorst, who was on the planning committee of the Luthertag, called Luther “the first German spiritual Führer” who spoke to all Germans regardless of clan or confession. In a letter to Hitler, Fahrenhorst reminded him that his “Old Fighters” were mostly Protestants and that it was precisely in the Protestant regions of our Fatherland” in which Nazism found its greatest strength. Promising that the celebration of Luther’s birthday would not turn into a confessional affair, Fahrenhorst invited Hitler to become the official patron of the Luthertag. In subsequent correspondence, Fahrenhorst again voiced the notion that reverence for Luther could somehow cross confessional boundaries: “Luther is truly not only the founder of a Christian confession; much more, his ideas had a fruitful impact on all Christianity in Germany.” Precisely because of Luther’s political as well as religious significance, the Luthertag would serve as a confession both “to church and Volk.” (Richard Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p.138.)

[Resettozero]

...for the sake of peace among the believers.

Peace among the brothers in Christ? Is that what you mean by "the believers"? If so, you are partially correct but are forgetting other sound Bible doctrine and instructions for edifying all Christian believers.

The term believers can have various meanings because of the nature of and the objects of each one's belief.

Saying all church-going believers should be accepted as brothers in Christ is a stretch of reality and may be your belief but is not mine.

[editor-surveyor]

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If you’re looking for a pedigree:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3263031/posts?page=695#695

You’ve nothing worth defending.

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[editor-surveyor]

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Cain was of his Father, the ‘Devil!’

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[verga]

Someone is off his meds again.

[af_vet_1981]

Are you a Jew hater like Martin Luther? I would guess not....but since you follow the rest of his teachings....I will ask. Do you agree with Martin Luther or not?

I will testify for CynicalBear. I have only read love and compassion for the Jewish people from him. He did not defend Luther in his communication with me. There is a simple test for antisemitism, which I present. Luther completely failed it, spending his last time on earth conspiring and plotting as to how he could physically harm Jews (robbery, rape, and murder). He was distressed when people gave sanctuary to the Jewish refugees, just like the Nazis who succeeded him.

Are the Jews that Luther hated, as well as the Jews who perished in the Holocaust, the least of Jesus' brethren ? Anything except an affirmative is not only cognitive dissonance, but antisemitism.

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.

Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
-Deuteronomy, Catholic chapter six, Protestant verses four to nine,
-Leviticus, Catholic chapter nineteen, Protestant verse eighteen,
-Matthew, Catholic chapter twenty two, Protestant verses thirty six to forty,
-Matthew, Catholic chapter twenty five, Protestant verses thirty two to forty six,
as authorized by King James.

[editor-surveyor]

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Are you a brother of Cain?

Or of Able?

You can’t be both.

(and followers of Yeshua do not take ‘meds.’)

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[Resettozero]

For you, and for the record, I am not nor have been a Lutheran or a follower of Martin Luther.

My attitude towards Jews and Israel changed drastically (became loving) in the days coinciding with my come-to-Jesus re-dedication some years ago. It’s a work of the Holy Spirit, not my own.

[D-fendr]

I accept that that's your answer.

Names, dates, places?..You are correct in saying it has been clear to me from the beginning what you have repeatedly asked.

Good. It seems you accept that your answer is not responsive to my question.

FRiend, we seem to be in a loop here: you post an answer, I reply that it doesn't answer my question, you post an answer....you complain of badgering.

This takes us into the personal range and off topic. If you're going to keep going and then ping the moderator on this, I suggest we just stop the loop and be done with each other here. Deal?

[verga]

The Bible says they both had the same father, Adam

[D-fendr]

Thanks for your reply.

You’d have to go back to the original post and discussion to understand what’s being referred to. If you care to join that discussion, you’re welcome to.