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Locked on 04/24/2022 5:40:39 AM PDT by Religion Moderator, reason:
Childishness |
Posted on 03/06/2022 11:16:06 AM PST by CharlesOConnell
A man commits a serious crime, then he gets released. He has "paid his debt to society". But wait a minute, he's only ready for the half-way house. He's unlikely to get a prestigious job in his new prison suit coat, or any job at all; he has civil impediments, he can't vote or hold certain offices. His crime was serious enough that he won't be presumed to have been completely rehabilitated until he performs a notable service to society, or at least spends many years on the straight and narrow, so that his crime can be truly overlooked or forgotten.
In Catholic faith, your "debt to society" is paid by Jesus Christ on Calvary. It's called "eternal punishment", without Christ it keeps you from going to heaven. Supposing that you do take advantage of His sacrifice, you're truly sorry, have a firm purpose of amendment, if you relapse, you go again for forgiveness (to the Sacrament of Confession).
But your sin leaves a strong trace at another layer of impurity called "temporal punishment due to sin", like the civil impediments facing the half-way house prisoner. Because "nothing impure can enter heaven", there is a place or a state, a condition of purification to render you fit for heaven after Christ has finally saved you from hell. The Catholic Church calls it purgatory.
(Where is it in the bible? Where is the word Trinity in the bible? Where does it say that you only need a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? Many valid principles aren't stated explicitly in the bible, but it does say to "hold fast to the traditions you have learned, whether by word or by letter", because much of the Gospel wasn't written down, as Jesus only wrote in the sand, the majority of the Gospel was taught from word to ear to people who couldn't afford expensive books, the exceptions were what tended to get written down. But the implication that there is a purgatory, is contained in the bible--see the comments.)
The ex-con can receive a pardon or commutation of his probation from a Governor, if he performs some heroic deed, saving numerous lives, or, like Chuck Colson, performs a long-lasting, valuable community service helping numerous people who can't help themselves.
In the Catholic Church there are 2 ways for the residual, temporal effects due to sin to be expiated: suffering in this life, or after life, undergoing purifying suffering along with other people who will finally be saved, but have to suffer for long without the vision of God--that is what causes them their pain.
Their suffering isn't meritorious enough to grant their release, the saints in heaven and those on earth suffering and practicing virtue can pray for the suffering souls in purgatory. In no way is their release by slow transfer of suffering or practice of virtue, "buying heaven". It's a long, excruciating process.
How the misunderstanding arose that Catholics think they can buy their way into heaven, is involved with history more than 500 years old. For a millennium of Christendom between roughly 410 and 1410, there was a Medieval civilization with harmony between faith and government.
Many small farmers would cluster around the manor house of a military lord who would protect them, in exchange for a certain fixed obligation of labor and agricultural produce. In most cases, those "serfs" had much more leisure than factory workers of the industrial revolution; there were a large number of holy days without work, and except for planting and harvesting, there were long stretches of idle time.
Another large sector of the economy surrounded monasteries, where the monks developed most of the farming practices that stabilized the serfs and their manorial lords. The monks who worked those monastic lands were sworn to poverty, so that monasteries built up large accumulations of economic value over decades and centuries of labor.
At the beginning, when lands were being cleared and put into production there weren't prominent town fairs ruled by merchants and bankers. Money wasn't used for sustenance, not even much barter occurred, life was mostly agrarian.
Charity was woven into the economy of monasteries. It was estimated that you only need travel 12 miles in medieval England between monasteries, where you could get a meal and minimal lodging for free, based on need. And the charity was also spiritual, including the ancient Catholic principle of prayer for the dead, which is biblical. (See "prayer for the dead" in the original King James Bible in the comment.)
There were foundations and benefices for praying for the dead, that allowed a person of means to support monasteries' charitable works, and in proportional response the monks would pray for the souls of the donors.
It happened at the close of the middle ages, that militarily strong nobles cast their eyes on the labor value accumulated by the poverty-sworn monks of the monasteries, which those nobles perceived as monetary wealth, especially where gold and jewels had been donated by the devout to adorn churches.
(Protestant writer William Cobbett wrote in his 1824 "A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland", an anecdote, that an incredibly valuable, hand illustrated bible was stripped of it's bejeweled, gold cover, the much more valuable hand-illumined manuscript, thrown in the mud and trampled by horses hooves by raiders suppressing the monasteries in Henry VIII's England.)
A new religion growing up around this seizure of monastic lands and valuables, that sought to discredit the Catholic Church, spread the black legend that the "sale of indulgences" was abusive. But this was very exceptional. Today the stipend of a Mass said for the dead is $10.
Ah, so now the cultists is presuming to have God’s eye to discern eternal destiny. Not a surprise given the Father of Lies.
Pinocchio is FICTION, just like when Ravi said he never had sex with those massage therapists in multiple countries all over the world.
Steps to Christ is NON-fiction.
“Ellen G. White has written over a million words and published over 50 books. She is the most published female writer of “NON-fiction” in history.
https://metaphrasislcs.com/the-most-translated-documents-in-the-world/
As an ex Catholic, I could agree with that. I can only speak for myself. I didn’t believe much of what the Catholic Church put out, but I didn’t really know that much about what the church put out. I was a pretty rebellious guy. I was only a Catholic, because my parents wanted me to be one. I rebelled, by not paying attention in catechism class. 😀
Once I joined the USAF, I left the Catholic Church, and started reading the Bible for myself. Where I live, the Catholics are as ignorant as I have ever seen, in reference to their knowledge of what the Catholic Church puts out, but they are generally interested in knowing the truth about the Bible. I am only happy to tell them the truth. 👍😀
—> Pinocchio is FICTION,
Exactly like Ellen G White!
Except Pinocchio is in the top 10.
Falseworld was outranked by The Watchtower, another cult! 😂😂😂
Better get busy and find a new category to rank in !
——>Ah, so now the cultists is presuming to have God’s eye to discern eternal destiny.
As I’ve stated MANY times before...that’s God’s job in the judgement, NOT MINE. I hope he makes it. However, there is a GRAVE lesson in the way he lived his life and how it relates to the false doctrine of OSAS.
—> Ellen G. White has written over a million words and published over 50 books
Plagiarizing much… including one book she stole outright.
I don’t think a prophet would steal - or make false predictions.
White did both.
Yet you follow her.
Yet you are a member of. Religion that judges scripture by her writings.
Seriously, why bother? Once that’s been done, you’d only jump to something else unrelated that you think will be a “gotcha.” It gets tiring. People know your M.O. by now, and I’m not going to do your homework for you.
Since I have no intention of researching EGW, did she know Joe Smith and Brigham Young? They are all a bunch of cultists, and you know who is the father of the cults. 😀😃
I didn’t think so.
—> Since I have no intention of researching EGW, did she know Joe Smith and Brigham Young? They are all a bunch of cultists, and you know who is the father of the cults.
Old Joe smith plagiarized the Book of Mormon.
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that Ellen plagiarized too.
all 3 said people lived on other planets:
Smith: the moon
Young: the sun
White: Saturn or Jupiter
The cultist is just trying to bait you, trying tobadger you into responses to his father’s deceits. As you wrote, why bother responding to the badgering. It will not stop so long as the spirit within him holds his soul. That spirit is the source of his obsession with the sins of Ravi Zacharias, sins which only God knows the extent thereof.
“Ellen G. White has written over a million words and published over 50 books. She is the most published female writer of “NON-fiction” in history.
...and, the book Steps to Christ by Ellen White is the third most translated book in the world only after the Holy Bible.
There, fixed it. Thanks.
Did Ravi know Bangkok Sally?
Sorry ol’ Phil, but your claim was shown to be a Falseworld tall tale, put out to reinforce the “faithful”
—> The book Steps to Christ by Ellen White is the second most translated book in the world only after the Holy Bible.
I want to note you did not specify “non-fiction”
Fallacy of shifting the goalpost!
Not that it would matter…
Fallacy of numbers too!
I wonder if Ellen considered plagiarizing Pinocchio too??
A plagiarist AND a false prophet!
Tell me Phil. What do you think the penalty for unrepentant sin is again?
An overly narrow superlative, I must say!
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