Posted on 10/31/2003 7:49:52 PM PST by UnklGene
You got it! It helps soothe his seared conscious to highlight in neon lights the sins of everyone else. It helps him mask the fact that he left his wife and children in order to have filthy anal sex with a man.
God has no need to judge a thing twice.
Getting desperate, it would seem.
It's going to happen and quite soon, I suspect.
As a child of the 60's, I believed in staying in, fighting from within, rather than leaving and trying to picket them, (whoever the "them" of the time was). But dang it, I'm getting the idea that it's time to leave. I've begun to realize that by staying, I am de facto countenancing what ECUSA is doing, even though the Church I belong to here in No. VA, and the other 4 I've belonged to, are not part of this heresy.
You are fortunate; for now I'd stay where you are. Would you recommend these churches to those in your area looking to leave churches that are part of the heresy?
There seem to be a few of us here. I rode through the prayer-book changes admittedly fairly unawares; it was the shock of going to a diocesan convention in '82 and seeing the naked effort by the liberals to hijack the church for political ends that was my wake-up call. By '83 I came to understand just how much the church had changed, and I found a new home in an APCK parish.
I think he's more than just a straw, but it also seems to me the tensions across the Anglican Communion have likely been rather greater than usual ever since ECUSA started running off to do its own thing. I will be surprised if his, um, "elevation" tomorrow (T minus 30 hours) isn't the trigger for the split.
Ignorance here: what is an APCK parish?
To both: I absolutely adored the Episcopal church - I got saved and filled with the Holy Spirit at age 6 or 7 in Sunday School through the beautiful, dedicated work of my young teacher (she was probably 18 and had a heart for souls like I've not since seen in that church).
I cannot here describe how that young woman's dedication that led me to Jesus spared my life over the years. It's a story for telling in heaven (and I WILL!). I was too young to understand much about the changes in the prayer book, etc., but I remember thinking at the time that it didn't feel right and I did not like it - and I'm not much of one to be led by my feelings on such cases. It was the way God used to stir me through the Holy Spirit, at that young age, that something not good was afoot.
Eventually, and while to this day I adore the way the Episcopalians give God the majesty and glory and AWESOMENESS due to Him in worship, and I love the communion service -- there is nothing like it in the other churches I've taken communion -- I had to leave. In His endless grace, God led me to a nondenominational church where I was refilled with the Holy Spirit in my early 20's.
If I were pastoring a church, I would want to blend elements of the charismatic worship and the majesty of the Episcopal, including using REAL WINE in communion. I asked the Lord why I felt such a deadness in nondenom's communion, compared with the extraordinary life I felt while taking Episcopal communion - He showed me that to take the fruit of the vine, kill it (pick it), crush it, and serve that, celebrates His death. But to put yeast* into it - a living thing - and ferment it, and serve it, brings the dead fruit of the vine alive again, and thereby allows the communicant to celebrate His death AND His resurrection. In any event, I have always felt extraordinarily close to God when taking Episcopal communion, and He used it to touch and preserve me through a very dark childhood.
Nondenominational churches can make God too familiar in many ways and it unbalances the flock, it inappropriately softens the reverential fear of God we are commanded Biblically to have. And yet the nondenom's bring God closer than the Episcopalians can ...
Obviously, we have not yet seen (anywhere!) the unspotted, unwrinkled, unblemished Church for which Jesus will return.
God is separating the sheep from the goats in this church.
*Yeast was not always referred to negatively in the Scriptures, since Jesus referred to the kingdom of heaven as yeast being inserted into dough, to raise it.
The first time I saw it, I inadvertently skipped the "Orphans in the Storm" episode - I honestly think God blinded me to its existence, because on a later viewing, when I did watch it, I was grieved and had to skip over the unclothed adulterers coming together ... I'm sure some wouldn't object but I found it absolutely unnecessary and demeaning to the plot. You can skip that episode and still be able to follow the story line.
APCK is an acronym for The Anglican Province of Christ the King -- the APCK is one of the Continuing Churches, stemmed from ECUSA. If you attended my church you'd find the old familiar service (albeit a bit more "High Church" than the quite low-church service I grew up with, but to me more beautiful, awesome and worshipful -- and yet we also have Cursillitas in our ranks).
Reprising your wisdom.
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