Posted on 04/01/2016 12:41:08 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
I am letting you be among the first to know. It is true. I am leaving the Catholic Church. I want you to know that this has not been a decision made in haste or without serious and intense research and consideration. But I can no longer remain in a church that I no longer believe in.
Let me explain.
I will be writing more about this soon, but for now let me just say there are five main reasons why I am leaving the Catholic Church:
1. I believe the sole rule of faith for Christians has to be Scripture. The Holy Bible is the only unchanging and definitive word of God that a Christian can build his or her life upon. Everything else, including the Catholic claims to authority, in the end, amount to ever-changing and ultimately sinking sand.
2. I believe works or any sense of salvific cooperation with God’s grace as constitutive to a Christian’s eternal life is unbiblical. “… not of works” (cf. Eph. 2:8-9) means not of works.
3. The idea of Mary and the saints being involved in the salvation of a Christian is tantamount to a denial of the sufficiency of Christ’s redeeming work on Calvary’s cross.
4. #3 can also be said of Purgatory, the “sacrifice” of the Mass, the Catholic view of salvation/justification, and more. These and more of the elements of Catholic teaching result in a denial of the sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ. More to follow in a more detailed post.
5. What Catholics call the “veneration” of Mary and the saints is actually idolatry.
These are just for starters here. Many of you know that for the last 28 years I have defended the above teachings and more from the Catholic Church. I can no longer do so in clear conscience.
And by the way, just so you know…
April fools!
Wow. The arrogance of catholicism on display again.
It may be hard for you to accept, but The Holy Spirit lives in the human spirit of those who have been born from above as Jesus instructed Nicodemus in John 3. Because that same Holy Spirit authored the Bible, whenever a member of Jesus’s family studies the scriptures God authored, that person has the glorious good fortune to be studying under God, the Mind of God. Of course, the human mind can only grasp so much so the amount of knowledge gained is dependent upon the willingness to be instructed BY GOD’S SPIRIT and the openness tot he revealed truths the Word of God declares. You see, the Word of God builds faith in what The Word of God declares. So, sola scriptura is a misnomer since the Word and The Spirit are in the study of The Word of God. It’s a twofer, terycarl, a twofer not a sola.
The discussion wasn’t about the meaning of sS.
Your claim, since you appear to have forgotten it, was and I quote.....
“Ahhhhh, sola scriptura......nothing ever happened if it wasn’t in scripture.....O.K., I guess.”
Then you changed it to claiming that sS means Scripture alone, which is not the same thing as your first posited.
Do try to keep your red herrings straight.
Here, Paul identifies who petra is, and that is Christ. This link takes you to the Greek.
http://biblehub.com/text/1_corinthians/10-4.htm
1 Corinthians 10:1-4 For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock (petra) that followed them, and the Rock (petra) was Christ.
http://biblehub.com/text/romans/9-33.htm
Romans 9:30-33 What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written,“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock (petra) of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
Even Peter himself identifies *petra* as being Jesus and does not claim that for himself.
http://biblehub.com/text/1_peter/2-8.htm
1 Peter 2:1-8 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,
“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,”
and
“A stone of stumbling, and a rock (petra) of offense.”
They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
All occurrences of *petra* in the Greek.
If the Greek is taken into consideration in these passages it places a proper understanding of what the message is.
Peter, at Pentecost, and afterwards, preached the Gospel. His message of the forgiveness of sins was to believe Christ.
Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?” 38Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Acts 2:37-38
And again, later.
Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; Acts 3:19.
Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 5:1
Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. John 5:24
For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.” John 6:40
Notice there is no mention of the catholic Mass. No mention of the necessity of eating and drinking the flesh and blood of Christ.
Notice, there is no appeal to have to go through Mary to get to Christ. Nor is there any appeal to saying a bunch of "Hail Marys".
If the Mass is the only way to be saved then I put to you these verses are either the truth or a lie.
If the Mass is the only way to be saved, then Jesus lied in John 5:24 and 6:40, and other passages as well, as there is zero mention of the Mass as practiced by roman catholicism.
The position of roman catholicism must be that Jesus told one group of people to believe in Him for eternal life and then changed the criteria for eternal life in John 6:54-57.
This would also nullify all of Paul's writings in Romans and the rest of his letters for these clearly teach it is by faith we come to Christ.
Interesting attempt at deflection but doesn't address the gnostic aspect of Protestantism that requires a hidden knowledge to know what Jesus Christ really meant. It's as bad as mormonism... or scientology. It's all made up on the spur of the moment with moving goalposts set up to defend the dogma that the Catholic Church must be wrong about everything.
I repeat, Protestantism would have us believe that Jesus Christ didn't mean IS, didn't mean "whose sins you forgive...", didn't mean "what God has joined together...", and meant something COMPLETELY incoherent in Revelation 20:12-13. NOTHING is as it seems.
Logically, you can NOT know this; for you'll only accept things from your church.
What, I'm supposed to turn tail and run because of that? No, private confessions were introduced by Irish priests in the 500s, before that you had to spill your guts to the entire assembly. A jolly good development of discipline if you ask me.
This business of isolating verses and linking them across entire books to build a doctrine is ridiculous and I won't sully the Sacred Scriptures by playing that game with you.
As you've been told before.
The phrase sola scriptura is from the Latin: sola having the idea of “alone,” “ground,” “base,” and the word scriptura meaning “writings”—referring to the Scriptures. Sola scriptura means that Scripture alone is authoritative for the faith and practice of the Christian. The Bible is complete, authoritative, and true. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).
Notice it says nothing about tradition be useful.
Well, Mr. Staples,
What you wrote is true, in spite of your attempt to make a joke out of it.
If Rome says that Sola Scriptura is NOT enough to get a person saved; what ELSE is needed?
And just WHY did they leave it OUT of the book they assembled?
You mean like a place where we are actually commanded to hold fast to them? Oh nvm, that couldn't have been literal, it has to be understood esoterically.
Call no man Father.
The Reformation principle of sola Scriptura has to do with the sufficiency of Scripture as our supreme authority in all spiritual matters. Sola Scriptura simply means that all truth necessary for our salvation and spiritual life is taught either explicitly or implicitly in Scripture. It is not a claim that all truth of every kind is found in Scripture. The most ardent defender of sola Scriptura will concede, for example, that Scripture has little or nothing to say about DNA structures, microbiology, the rules of Chinese grammar, or rocket science. This or that “scientific truth,” for example, may or may not be actually true, whether or not it can be supported by Scripture—but Scripture is a “more sure Word,” standing above all other truth in its authority and certainty. It is “more sure,” according to the apostle Peter, than the data we gather firsthand through our senses (2 Peter 1:19). Therefore, Scripture is the highest and supreme authority on any matter on which it speaks.
But there are many important questions on which Scripture is silent. Sola Scriptura makes no claim to the contrary. Nor does sola Scriptura claim that everything Jesus or the apostles ever taught is preserved in Scripture. It only means that everything necessary, everything binding on our consciences, and everything God requires of us is given to us in Scripture (2 Peter 1:3).
Furthermore, we are forbidden to add to or take away from Scripture (cf. Deut. 4:2; 12:32; Rev. 22:18-19). To add to it is to lay on people a burden that God Himself does not intend for them to bear (cf. Matt. 23:4).
Scripture is therefore the perfect and only standard of spiritual truth, revealing infallibly all that we must believe in order to be saved and all that we must do in order to glorify God. That—no more, no less—is what sola Scriptura means.
“The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.” —Westminster Confession of Faith
This excerpt is taken from John MacArthur’s contribution in Sola Scriptura: The Protestant Position on the Bible.
And yet that is EXACTLY what Catholicism does in numerous instances.
It cherry picks a verse about retaining sins in complete contradiction of numerous passages that prove it wrong.
It claims we must eat the flesh and blood of Jesus to have life in us when the eating of blood of unequivocally forbidden throughout Scripture.
It builds a who theology about Mary based on a few verses that don't even have anything to do with her, like Genesis 3:15, the wedding at Cana and the passage in Revelation about Jesus proceeding from Israel.
No practicing Catholic has any standing whatsoever to lecture anyone about isolating verses and linking them across books to build doctrine.
Exactly what tradition is it that has been passed down that was necessary for us to know that was not included in Scripture?
How do you know it was from Paul?
How do you know it was passed down faithfully and without corruption?
Please provide documentation for verification purposes.
The Catholic church’s say so is not documentation.
However, there is no isolation of Scripture. These are just a few examples.
If you do a word study on believe you will see that in John alone he used the word 50+ times in relation to faith in Christ.
Which is more credible?
John as moved by the Holy Spirit noted Jesus saying you have to believe on more than one occasion to have eternal life or
Jesus speaking to a group of unbelieving Jews who refused to understand His message of belief...that He was the bread of life and that by believing in Him one would have eternal life.
It was the unbelieving Jews who raised the issue of how could Jesus give them His flesh and blood to eat and drink. Jesus understood their hardheadedness and told them something so improbable it could not happen. They had to physically eat and drink His flesh and blood.
If cathoicism wants to take this as a literal understanding then right then and there they should have killed Him and began to consume His flesh and blood.
That this was not what He meant was clearly understood by the disciples as evidenced in John 6:67-69 when Peter replied to His question....We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.
They knew it was about faith in Him. This message of faith is clearly in line with the rest of the NT. The catholic position of consuming the flesh and blood is the out liar.
Further the concept of the roman catholic Mass where the priest tells Jesus to come down from Heaven to be resacrificed again and again is in stark contradiction to Hebrews 10.
I think that lays to rest your assertion of isolated scriptures.
Now, let's look at the catholic position on Mary. Upon one verse in John 2:5, where Mary is not even mentioned by name, catholics have built a whole false theology that Mary somehow tells Jesus what to do and He does it.
Further compounding their error, they base the immaculate conception on one verse in Luke 1:28 on which the DR translation is based upon an admitted incorrect translation of the Vulgate. Further compounding error is the admitted position of the catholic encyclopedia online that there is "No direct or categorical and stringent proof of the dogma can be brought forward from Scripture. "http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=6056
Where catholics derive their false teachings on all of the abilities of Mary defies Scripture in every facet. It is cultish in nature.
We can keep playing this game, but the roman catholic position on the Mass and the IC are falsehoods built upon a poor exegesis of the Scripture.
This is My Body
I suppose it all depends on what your definition of is, is. Like IS means, is NOT.
Calling priests father came from the same group of priests who introduced private confession, take it up with them.
So far, I have found that every heresy in catholiciism can be traced back to the original Nimrod religion of the ancient Babylonian period. the more one sees this transference from the ancient pagan religion (they even ate the food sacrificed to the idol in order to get the idol’s life in them), the more it is looking like catholiciism on the seven hills is Baal process reborn for modern man. Would that make catholiciism/the Vatican religion, a whore of Babylon?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.