Thanks for your response. There are a number of mistatements here, but I'm going to confine the discussion as to how they pertain to the point of the article.
You mention the Eucharist. One of the ways in which traditional Christianity has strayed from the truth is in WHEN the bread and wine are supposed to be eaten and drank in remembrance of Christ. In remembrance:
1Co 11:24 And when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.
1Co 11:25 After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.
The partaking (and I'm sure you'll agree), is done in remembrance of Christ and his sacrifice. It's memorial to his death.
What has been lost is that this was done on Passover, a festival instituted by God:
Lev 23:5 In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD's passover.
Passover, the Lord's passover, is a yearly event. Memorials are held on a yearly basis. Christ changed the way Passover is celebrated by illuminating it's true meaning. He did NOT change the fact that Passover, and all of the Lord's festivals, still exists.
Traditional Christianity has removed those festivals and instituted their own. This is just one way that it has deviaed from the bible.
1Co 5:7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:
On the other hand, they do insist upon ritual cleanliness in foods, observe Easter as Quartodecemians and hold their Sabbath on Saturday.
A couple of points that are mistaken on this. I do not, and nor does UCG, insist upon "ritual cleanliness" of foods. Again, this is another area in which traditional Christianity as deviated from God's word. God created certain animals as food for humans, and many animals as not acceptable for food. These are clearly listed in Levitucus:
Lev 11:2 Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, These are the beasts which ye shall eat among all the beasts that are on the earth.
God tells his children what animals to eat and what not to eat.
It's possible that you're confusing the ritual eating habits of the Jewish religion with what's in the bible. Christ agreed that this ritual is a manmade custom:
Mat 15:2 Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread. Mat 15:3 But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?
You quoted Matthew 15, but the verses quoted show that Christ was addressing traditions of the Jewish "church", not what was written in scripture. The traditional Christian church is in the same circumstance today, elevating tradition over scripture.
Concerning the sabbath, guilty. The Lord's sabbath is on the 7th day, from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset:
Exo 20:8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Exo 20:9 Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work:
Exo 20:10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
Exo 20:11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
The Lord blessed the sabbath and day and made it holy. Good enough for me.
This rather begs a great number of questions, not the least of which is where Constantine received his Apostolic mandate to regularize and institutionalize the Church. There happens to be a great literature on the subject, but none of that is cited here.
With good reason. The authority of scripture is superior to any opinions or treatises that man has written concerning it. That's why the article focuses on scripture rather than historical opinions of men.
thank you for bringing this to attention and am glad I read it. I do wish the authors were of the true Apostolic succession and joyful members of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
I thank you for your respectful tone. Obviously I don't share your belief that the Catholic church IS the church established by Christ, although I'm sure there are members, or at least future members of God's church within that organization.
Sorry, I should have pinged you to post 8.
You are welcome, to be sure. I would suggest you also attempt to address the points spmb raises, which are the background to which I referred in extreme compression.
Like that commentator, I firmly believe that the Church is both Apostolic and Catholic precisely because she has remained under the godly rule and admonition of her Apostolic bishops. Wherever the bishops have gone wrong, they have taken people into heresy and schism. Also, whenever 'prophets' have proclaimed a new revelation (or at best unknowingly repeated an already-ancient one, which is what this article does), they also lead people into heresy and schism. I need only mention the names Montanus, Nestorius, Paul of Samosata among Church elders who developed a novel understanding of Scripture and inaugurated heresies both long-lasting (that is, right up to today) and divisive. To reject the Holy Catholic Church in all her parts is equally divisive, no matter how much Scripture is cited in the process.
I only have two additional points to make:
The Eucharist is the mystical communion of the faithful, believing partaker with Christ, who is mystically present in the bread and wine. He told us to eat of His flesh and to drink His blood. I take that as a direct order which I humbly obey. My basic difficulty in this is how to find bread and wine which are mystically His Body and Blood. Our Lord consecrated bread and wine at the Last Supper, broke the bread and gave it to His Apostles and told them to do likewise. He did not say 'this is a memory of Me'. He said 'This is an anamnesis of Me', that is, the bringing into the present of that which existed in the past. At the end of His earthly ministry, He then ordained the Apostles, laying His hands upon them and breathing the Holy Spirit into them and directed them to go into the world, baptizing all people and teaching them to follow all of His commandmenets. That He comannded them to celebrate the Eucharist must certainly be one of those commandments. That He ordained them AND NO OTHERS to do this meant that they were empowered through Him to do this. That we must always do this is why we inferred that the authority to do so could be passed on, SO LONG AS IT WAS PASSED ON IN THE SAME WAY AS IT WAS ORIGINALLY GRANTED. The Apostolic ministry in the Catholic/Orthodox/Anglican Church has always done this. And so there is today an access to the Body and Blood, so long as faithful Christians partake of bread and wine consecrated by authentically consecrated bishops or their delegate presbyters. There is no other way to obey this command. We sin if we wilfully disobey what cannot be taken as other than a direct order from our Lord and Savior.
Is the Eucharist also a memorial? Yes, but that is the least important facet of this holy mystery. As I say, the Eucharist is an anamnesis rather than a memory, despite many faulty translations suggesting the two words are synonyms. They are not.
The other point relates to the Canon of Scripture. You have stated that God canonized Scripture long before men did. This probably has significant analysis behind it, but for humans to know that a given text is canonized or not, some human or group of humans is going to have to say that the text is canonized, so everybody else will know. That group is going to have to have authority to say that this text is canonized while that one is not and the Church as a whole is going to have to then ratify that the decision is valid.
This all happened, but it happened in historic time by humans we can name. It was generally ratified at Councils we can also name and date. Now, does this eliminate God's authority? I suppose it could, if the humans performing the canonization ever suggested they were trying to personally take credit for having identified canonical text. They never did and no one has ever accepted a text as canonical that has not been repeatedly validated and authenticated by a wide variety of Church bodies. So the Body has spoken under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit as to what constitutes the true Word of God as written for our salvation and edification.
To suggest otherwise is to suggest that someone, somewhere had a special revelation that made them personally the witness of God in these matters. Do you have such a candidate to advance? If not, then the authority must have been the various Apostolic witnesses, Church councils and Church Fathers who have attested that they agree that the books we receive as the Old and the New Testament are indeed all that is necessary for salvation and the Canon of Scripture for all time.
Thanks again for the discussion and may God bless you in all your ways and may His Holy Spirit lead you into all truth and to final salvation.
Not thinking about who wrote it, what denomination they are etc, I think it is right on. False teachers abound in the world of Christianity. I have been to Churches and seen preachers on TV saying we are under grace, not under law, for example. (Or, "that is legalism".) I joined one Church and then left when the Pastor said the Ten Commandments were just a good example to follow, but were OLD Testament, therefore not for us today. The doctrines of men are alive and well all over the place! Excellent article IMHO.