Posted on 09/10/2001 1:03:43 PM PDT by Brian Kopp DPM
What IP address would a demon, fallen angel or evil spirit post from? Would they have their own ISP in hell, or would they hack in through Steven King's connection?
Don't forget fasting!
The heart of the matter is, did they humble themselves before God and ask forgiveness through faith in Jesus Christ and believe they died with Christ, were buried with Christ, and resurrected to a new life in Christ and are following him? If so, they are a child of God and their names are written by God in the Lamb's Book of Life. If they love God and have made him Lord of their lives, that is the heart of the matter.
The majority of healings Jesus did were delivering people from demons. Demons are real. Satan is real. God explains in great detail the evil that surrounds mankind.
Name them...
I have been a Papist for some time, and never yet has a priest of my acquaitance revealed his sexuality to me. But then again, I have never asked...
In the case of 2, (of whom I was all but certain) I have named them to their respective diocese. I considered this my responsibility. I have no such responsibility to you.
I have been a Papist for some time, and never yet has a priest of my acquaitance revealed his sexuality to me. But then again, I have never asked...
The 2 of whom I speak, "revealed their sexuality" to young boys. Perhaps you should consider yourself lucky. They didn't ask either.
My Christian friends can speak for themselves regarding their beliefs. I happen to respect the philosophical constructs which serve as the foundation of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. I also respect those who value those teachings, and seek to make them an important part of their lives.
I do not however, share that opinion. I happen to believe that demons, devils, spooks, goblins, and other assorted personified manifestations of evil, are all simply imaginary boogermen invented by shamans through the ages to scare their respective congregations into obedience.
I am fairly certain that my Christian friends are aware of my opinion on this issue. They certainly are entitled to question my beliefs, and in fact often do.
How did you come to "know" this? Not meant to be a contentious question. Did the young boys come to you? How did you ascertain the truthfulness of the claim?
Just curious.
I agree. Although I am Catholic, and this is written by a Southern Baptist, this is an article that I think most of us can also agree upon. As you read it, I think you will understand why:
R. Albert Mohler, Jr., is president and professor of Christian theology of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, the flagship school of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Faith Without Works is Dead: An Evangelical Meditation on Mother Teresa
By R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
"But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?" With those words the Apostle James declared war on the theological fiction that intellectual assent to orthodox doctrine is the sum total of the Christian faith. And yet, the place and priority of good works in the Christian life remains a vexing issue for believers- and a fierce issue of debate among the theologians.
The death of Mother Teresa of Calcutta brings this issue unavoidably to light. The remarkable nun had achieved world-wide recognition for her work among those she identified as "the poorest of the poor," and that recognition was richly deserved.
Taking over a former temple to Kali-the Hindu goddess of death and destruction-Mother Teresa and her Sisters of Charity took in the sick, the dying, and the destitute. Her mission became known as a refuge for those who had no refuge. The dying received care in the name of Jesus Christ, and their bodies were washed and tended. Asked if she feared death, Mother Teresa replied, "No, I see it all the time."
Visitors to her mission were quickly handed a bowl of food to feed to an abandoned infant, or a basin for washing a dying beggar. She would be interviewed while constantly at work, and her face gave ample evidence of her hours of loving labor.
An Albanian by birth, Mother Teresa was already a nun when in 1946 she received "a call within a call" and heard God calling her to found a new religious order dedicated to tending the abandoned of Calcutta. Pressed by the little nun (she was less than five feet tall), the Vatican relented and established her order. Taking the motto, "Let every action of mine be something beautiful for God," Mother Teresa and twelve sisters started the order and its work.
Fame came through a television documentary by Malcolm Muggeridge, the British journalist. Shortly thereafter, Mother Teresa would be famous, and Malcolm Muggeridge, forever touched by her example, would convert to Catholicism. In a book based upon his documentary of the same title, Something Beautiful for God, Muggeridge wrote that Mother Teresa could "hear in the cry of every abandoned child the cry of the Bethlehem child; recognize in every leper's stumps the hands which once touched sightless eyes and made them see."
Later years would bring awards including the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize, and honorary degrees from universities including Harvard-not previously known for honoring nuns. (Speaking to Harvard graduates on the eve of their commencement, she instructed them on the virtue of sexual chastity. Her instructions were bold, and almost certainly too late.) Her sense of calling was as concentrated as a laser beam, and she was equally capable of creating heat or light. She declined the customary Nobel award banquet and asked that the money be sent to her mission. When Pope Paul VI gave her a limousine, she sold it with dispatch and started a new charity project.
Her courageous stand against the enemies of life won her hatred as well as notoriety. Living through the central decades of what historian John Lukacs calls "the bloody twentieth century," Mother Teresa contended for the sanctity of life on the streets, and in the womb.
Standing to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, she aimed her words at the enemies of the unborn: "To me the nations with legalized abortion are the poorest nations. The greatest destroyer of peace today is the crime against the unborn child." This was, we can be certain, not what the Swedish Academy had in mind.
Her boldest stand was taken in Washington, D.C., where in 1994 Mother Teresa addressed the National Prayer Breakfast. The sari-clad nun declared that abortion is "a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself." The mother and the father are both complicit in this murderous act. "By abortion, the mother does not learn to live, but kills even her own child to solve her problems, And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion."
Turning political correctness on its head, she refused to retreat into speaking of those involved in abortion as merely women and men-she called them mothers and fathers, exhibiting a moral honesty and courage rarely seen in this age of moral timidity. But her most courageous words were still to come. Standing before over 4,000 of Washington's most powerful officials-including President and Mrs. Clinton-she softly but sternly pled: "Please don't kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child."
Such moral courage is rare in Washington, or in any other modern city. Mother Teresa was not making a hypothetical offer-her children's home in Calcutta claims to have saved over 3,000 children from abortion.
Mother Teresa seemed unable to understand how Americans could be so morally debased. In an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court, she attacked the infamous Roe v. Wade decision which legalized abortion. "It was a sad infidelity to America's highest ideals when this Court said that it did not matter, or could not be determined, when the inalienable right to life began for a child in its mother's womb." In yet another context, she simply asked, "If a mother can kill her own child, then what is left of the West to be destroyed?"
Her moral clarity earned her enemies. In 1994 she was attacked for her pro-life convictions in a British television production wickedly entitled Hell's Angel. Her order accepted financial support from the rich, the famous, and the scandalous. When she was criticized for accepting money from unsavory business and political leaders, she replied that she had no right to refuse money which could go to the poor.
The political left rejected her hands-on ministry as quaint, if not dangerous, and attacked her for not addressing "the root causes of poverty" in capitalism, multinational corporations, and other economic patterns. Mother Teresa kept washing bodies and saving babies.
She was famous for her good works. This is a challenge to evangelical understanding. Did she trust in her good works for her salvation? Roman Catholic doctrine holds, not only that faith without works is dead, but that our good works cooperate with grace. Evangelicals rightly reject this as the very works righteousness the Apostle Paul so eloquently-and conclusively-rejected. Salvation is entirely by grace through faith, and completely apart from works.
And yet, good works subsequent to salvation are evidence of genuine faith. But even these works are enabled by the grace of God working through those He has regenerated. This is completely missed by the media, and by the pundits of popular culture. One reporter on National Public Radio said that Mother Teresa was "the Word made flesh."
Our Lord commanded that we let our light shine before others "that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." For the Christian, the purpose of works is not to bring attention to ourselves as good, but to point to God, who alone is good.
Did Mother Teresa know this? Was her faith in Christ, and in Christ alone? Representatives of at least six non-Christian religions participated in Mother Teresa's state funeral in India. Was she clear that Jesus Christ is the only Savior, and that salvation is found in His name, and in His name alone?
The answers to these questions are, for now, known only to God. The issue before evangelicals is this: Do we have what it takes to produce a Mother Teresa? Do we have the courage, the concern, and the love for "the least of these" required for such a ministry? Have we grown spiritually blind and deaf to the "untouchables" around us?
Where are the evangelical orders of committed evangelist/caregivers, who will take up a ministry to those like the destitute and dying of Calcutta? Our credibility before the watching world is at stake, and in question.
Those who know that salvation is purely by grace through faith, and that we have nothing to claim but the shed blood of Jesus Christ also know that, on the basis of that same biblical revelation, we are told to minister in Christ's name. The danger is always that we will either trust in our works for our salvation, or deny the importance of works after our salvation.
We should remember the instruction of Augustine, the great theologian of the early church, who reminds us that good works "are the consequences rather than the precedents of grace. Thus, no man is to suppose that he has received grace because he has done good works but rather that he would not have been able to do those good works if he had not, through faith, received grace."
As we reflect upon the death of Mother Teresa, may we glorify God for her good works and take courage from her example as a defender of the unborn and the despised. May we preach the gospel of grace, and may the evidence of that grace be so abundant that God is glorified. As this murderous and immoral century comes to a close, may evangelical Christians bear witness to both the grace and the goodness of God, and may God do something beautiful through us.
R. Albert Mohler, Jr., is president and professor of Christian theology of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, the flagship school of the Southern Baptist Convention.
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The danger is always that we will either trust in our works for our salvation, or deny the importance of works after our salvation.
A further danger is that we will trust OURSELVES to judge whether OTHERS are trusting in God or their own works.
When we OURSELVES start judging OTHERS as relying on their own works for salvation, then WE are judging their souls.
Judging others' souls (not simply their acts, which is scriptural) is unscriptural, sinful, and engaged in far too often on Free Republic. I hope it will stop.
In one instance, my sister (a health professional) came across the information, and asked my advice. We went to church officials who shipped the offender out of state. Not sure what his ultimate fate was.
The other case was in a religious summer camp in which I happened to be a camper. I was perhaps 10 or 11 years old. On day 2 of my summer camp experience, 2 of the counselors/clergy, decided it was time to play a game of "catch the naked counselor" in the woods. I declined. I left the camp, walked about 15 miles to a telephone, and tearfully reported the incident to my parents. They came to get me, and reported the incident to police and to camp officials. Nothing came of it. About ten years later, one of those same clergymen/counselors was arrested for the homosexual abuse of children, after one of his victims put a bullet through his skull. Apparently the toll of six consecutive years of sexual abuse for the summer took it's toll on this young man. The dead boy's brother (who was also abused by the same man) testified against him, and he was ultimately imprisoned for his crime.
Unfortunately, my experience has been that the church does not take this issue anywhere near as seriously as it needs to. Offenders are generally shuffled from place to place, rather than dealt with. If news accounts are any indication, my experience is not unusual.
In any case, THAT is how I ascertained the "truthfullness" of this claim.
Is that satisfactory?
The Orthodox Christian Church does hold to a different definition of theosis.
As shown in this example:
The Orthodox doctrine of theosis neither impugns Trinitarian doctrine, nor entails a loss of humanity. Robert M. Bowman, Jr., a Protestant, explains: "In keeping with monotheism, the Eastern Orthodox do not teach that men literally become "gods" (which would be polytheism). Rather, as did many of the church fathers, they teach that men are "deified" in the sense that the Holy Spirit dwells within Christian believers and transforms them into the image of God in Christ, eventually endowing them in the resurrection with immortality and God’s perfect moral character."
I'm so glad that I was able to help correct this misunderstand concerning the teachings of the early church. Obviously, just because one person claims to define a term doesn't mean that he or she is truly representing historical Christian teaching.
Anyway, the mistake was mine. I thought you were discussing one thing when you were clearly discussing another (often referred to as the difference between small 'o' and big 'O' Orthodoxy).
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