Posted on 01/26/2018 1:04:07 PM PST by GoldenState_Rose
We are in a time of the first ever mass conversions of Muslims,” Father Mitch Pacwa SJ told me in a phone interview. “God is doing a mighty work among them.”
Pacwa said that mass conversions are happening even in very fundamentalist countries. There is rapidly growing number of conversions especially on the edges of the Muslim world in the western and southern parts of Africa, he said. “Africa is now growing predominantly Christian despite crackdowns,” Pacwa said.
Some of the noteworthy countries he mentioned include Iran, reported to have 3 million Christians, and Indonesia with reports of 2 million a year converting.
“In Mongolia, the president opened the country to Christians and there’s even an archbishop,” Pacwa said. “They built a Catholic school there too. If I was younger, I would have gone.” He said that the desire for a Western education was the impetus to open up the country to the Catholic Church.
There are even conversions happening in many strict Muslim countries, according to Pacwa. He did not want to go on record with particulars for fear of increased retribution. Mass conversions are also being reported among refugees that are filling up the Christian churches left empty by Europeans. Many wonder if those are authentic conversions or just a response to improving their chances for amnesty, but time will tell.
Signs of this conversion are showing up in the U.S. too, Pacwa said. “I was about to celebrate Mass at a Maronite church in San Diego and I said hi to a man who introduced himself as Achmad. I asked if he was a Christian. He said: ‘Yes, I was recently baptized.’ He said he from Morocco. Christians do not have the name Ahmad—that’s a form of Mohammad.”
(Excerpt) Read more at ncregister.com ...
It is pretty easy, e-s.
I read the Scriptures and know how to accurately divide the Word of Truth.
Also, I don't start with any presuppositions from any fake rabbis.
Have it now. Sealed now for the Day of Redemption now. Seated in the Heavenlies with Christ now. Indwelt by His life now.
I'm sorry you seem not to have salvation or assurance of salvation. It is your call though bro. You've been warned and encouraged.
Be that as it may, conflating practice with theology is a mistake.
When it comes down to it, the theological dividing line is “works,” and it’s only a line because Revisionists insist on a formula for works no where validated in Scripture.
Christianity didn't start under Rome, nor did the Apostles teach at least half of what Rome teaches.
No, but Christianity did grow into Rome, like it or not. And the apostles may not have taught half of what Rome teaches, but Newton didn’t teach half of what Hawking teaches, either.
I could not disagree with your opinion any more than I do.Rome teaches salvation by works with grace added by those works via sacraments. A view never presented in the NT - neither sacraments, nor the granting of grace by completing these sacraments. To this, they add many pagan practices that moved from Greeks to Romans to the Roman Catholic Church.
The Bible teaches saving faith by grace with a changed life that follows. Faith that doesn't have works following, is dead. Christ's new life after new birth, expresses itself in fruit.
No, it did not.
God has always had His "that have not bowed the knee to Baal."
Romanism is a separate religion that combines pagan beliefs and practices with teachings from the Bible. This doesn't save anyone.
Well, you’re perfectly free to assert what you want, but the various sects in communion with Rome are apostolic, and the Revisionists are biblical.
I’m okay with that.
However, I choose apostolic because my journey with biblical convinced me biblical has many answers inferred by man that have never been validated by God.
Nice try; but Philip did NOT use the Traditions of the Apostles when explaining the Christ to the Ethiopian eunuch: just the scroll of Isaiah.
Like...
...call no man a fool?
I like how you destroy the PROT's arguments with evidence; point-by-point.
--Catholic_Wannabe_Dude(Hail Mary)
Is THIS part of what you guys are taught in catechism class??
25 When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”
26 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. 27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
28 Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
30 So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’[c]”
32 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
34 “Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”
35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 36 But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. 37 All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. 38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
Apostolic sounds great on the surface, but Scripture never requires any line of descent from an Apostle
Indeed, if you look at history, people come to Christ without the presence of a Church of any kind and often through the manifestation of Christ Himself, appearing in a dream, as is happening across the muslim world today.
When you look underneath the history of Rome, you find no clear path of descent. There were times with more than one pope, and popes that bought their position, etc. It is a path marked by corruption and integration with paganism.
Best.
Which the eunuch happened to be reading in the first place.
And the eunuch couldn’t make heads or tails of it until Phillip explained it to him, so what’s your point?
Like how stiffnecked we can be without a Damascus road incident.
So how does the guy who “gets saved” know he’s not the one who received the Word with great joy in the midst of the thorns?
Sure it does. Read what Jesus said about eating His Flesh, etc. Then read what Peter says about baptism.
The “Bible as final authority” was imposed by men 1500 years after the founding of the Church. Not imposed by God, Jesus, an angel, or an apostle; I don’t understand how one can’t see the inherent weakness of that doctrine.
It makes no sense to cite the silence of the Bible as proof when the topic being debated is the sufficiency of that very same Bible.
Furthermore, corruption in the papacy does not delegitimize the office just as Saul did not delegitimize the throne of Israel.
All church offices are listed in Scripture. Pope doesn't make the cut - for hundreds of years.
Furthermore, corruption in the papacy does not delegitimize the office just as Saul did not delegitimize the throne of Israel.
Orthodox Churches, which are equally Apostolic, deny the office of a Papacy and always have since the time of the Apostles. It is illegitimate and didn't develop until it followed the path of Rome to have a Caesar.
Good point too.
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