Posted on 10/21/2006 4:52:03 AM PDT by NYer
The summary should say "never mentioned....not ever mentioned.
Thank you, Douglas.
I am no expert, but I do think a lot of what you are calling contrary interpretations are actually doctrines of men. Many denominations have their own traditions that are handed down. Doesn't mean that someone actually is really searching scripture, which I do believe interprets itself. This has been my experience in various Churches anyway.
Who better to hear you, than someone who has been where you are?! adiaireton8 is a lifelong Protestant who recently converted to the Catholic Church. This is not something one does on a whim. This is often a very painful process as it entails leaving friends and loved ones, behind.
Christ through His Church offers us the fruit of the tree of life through the sacraments and especially the Eucharist. But we already see the fruit of the tree of the 'knowledge' of good and evil, in the destruction of Christian unity into 20,000+ sects, with further fragmentation occuring on a daily basis, contrary to Christ's prayer in John 17 that Christians would all be "perfected in unity".
Back in 1978, a Pentecostal minister by the name of Alex Jones decided to do some research and offer his congregation a 'New Testament' worship service. They were all in favor. He turned to the Church Fathers , to understand how they worshiped the Lord in the first centuries following His death and resurrection. What he discovered, forever altered his relationship with our Lord.
To illustrate what he was talking about, in the spring of 1998 he re-enacted an early worship service, never intending to alter his congregation’s worship style. “But once I discovered the foundational truths and saw that Christianity was not the same as I was preaching, some fine-tuning needed to take place.”
The end result was this.
What exactly do you think it means to be "perfected in unity"?(John 17:23)
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--To be CONFORMED TO THE IMAGE OF CHRIST and thereby become more fully each his own person.
--To be submitted to The Lordship of Jesus Christ.
--To be led by Christ's Holy Spirit in a wonderful dialogue and dance with Him.
--To Love as Jesus Loves and walk in His humility.
--To major in God's majors and minor in God's minors.
Thank you my dear. What you just posted says it all.
Thank you for sharing your profound experience. It is reminiscent of what Dr. Scott Hahn, another convert, experienced on his first visit to a Catholic Mass.
Scott Hahn’s The Lamb's Supper - The Mass as Heaven on Earth.
Foreword by Fr. Benedict Groeschel.
Part One - The Gift of the Mass
Hahn begins by describing the first mass he ever attended.
"There I stood, a man incognito, a Protestant minister in plainclothes, slipping into the back of a Catholic chapel in Milwaukee to witness my first Mass. Curiosity had driven me there, and I still didn't feel sure that it was healthy curiosity. Studying the writings of the earliest Christians, I'd found countless references to "the liturgy," "the Eucharist," "the sacrifice." For those first Christians, the Bible - the book I loved above all - was incomprehensible apart from the event that today's Catholics called "the Mass."
"I wanted to understand the early Christians; yet I'd had no experience of liturgy. So I persuaded myself to go and see, as a sort of academic exercise, but vowing all along that I would neither kneel nor take part in idolatry."
I took my seat in the shadows, in a pew at the very back of that basement chapel. Before me were a goodly number of worshipers, men and women of all ages. Their genuflections impressed me, as did their apparent concentration in prayer. Then a bell rang, and they all stood as the priest emerged from a door beside the altar.
Unsure of myself, I remained seated. For years, as an evangelical Calvinist, I'd been trained to believe that the Mass was the ultimate sacrilege a human could commit. The Mass, I had been taught, was a ritual that purported to "resacrifice Jesus Christ." So I would remain an observer. I would stay seated, with my Bible open beside me.
As the Mass moved on, however, something hit me. My Bible wasn't just beside me. It was before me - in the words of the Mass! One line was from Isaiah, another from Psalms, another from Paul. The experience was overwhelming. I wanted to stop everything and shout, "Hey, can I explain what's happening from Scripture? This is great!" Still, I maintained my observer status. I remained on the sidelines until I heard the priest pronounce the words of consecration: "This is My body . . . This is the cup of My blood."
Then I felt all my doubt drain away. As I saw the priest raise that white host, I felt a prayer surge from my heart in a whisper: "My Lord and my God. That's really you!"
I was what you might call a basket case from that point. I couldn't imagine a greater excitement than what those words had worked upon me. Yet the experience was intensified just a moment later, when I heard the congregation recite: "Lamb of God . . . Lamb of God . . . Lamb of God," and the priest respond, "This is the Lamb of God . . ." as he raised the host. In less than a minute, the phrase "Lamb of God" had rung out four times. From long years of studying the Bible, I immediately knew where I was. I was in the Book of Revelation, where Jesus is called the Lamb no less than twenty-eight times in twenty-two chapters. I was at the marriage feast that John describes at the end of that very last book of the Bible. I was before the throne of heaven, where Jesus is hailed forever as the Lamb. I wasn't ready for this, though - I was at Mass!
So simple yet so revolutionary.
Certainly the more we listen and the more we obey, the more we hear.
But sometimes . . . God can seem to require some very persistent effort at hearing His precise word to us in a given situation well.
Jesus didn't mention any middle men who would think for us.
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Excellent point.
There's a wholesale absence of such an idea in the whole of the NT.
The leaders Christ raised up . . . were to be . . . are to be . . .
SERVANTS.
Gold encrusted, lofty, pontifical servants? Doesn't compute.
Oh my, you said that so much better than I tried to! :-) That is why I mostly sit back back, read, and let the rest of you handle these things! Well done!
So why all the Protestant sects? It is the big elephant in the room that you are denying when you state that we don't need any men or magesterium to interpret it.
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Perhaps the Romans hand out PhD's in sounding like broken records?
No big elephant. The notion is nonsense. The notion is unBiblical. The notion is hollow, empthy, useless.
SCRIPTURE indicates that The Gospel and the truths of God are to be received, believed, trusted on and acted on as A LITTLE CHILD.
Doesn't seem to me that anywhere in the NT is there an expectation that individual sheep are to be considered incapable of discerning, learning, feeding on, memorizing, practicing THE WORD OF GOD except with professional assistants and those from lofty positions above them.
THAT NOTION is more from the pit of hell.
Indeed.
But if there's the notion that the 20,000 are to be slammed up against our screens with impunity and silence resulting . . . without including the Roman sect in the number . . . that notion is utter nonsense.
Shoot--within the Roman group itself, they probably would come close to that number of 'sect-like' different opinions and perspectives.
This idea that the Roman group speaks with one voice and believes one truly truest true TRUTH is utter nonsense.
A gross deception of the worst order.
and here come the lawyers, adding opinion after opinion, until you get massive texts of legalese in which no one can make sense, then here come the pharisees to not teach us anything, just lay burdens upon us (now I know you'll like this Quizx!)
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Christ pegged such leaders of RELIGIONS very well.
You are a wonderful Dear Heart.
LUB,
Whatever the protestant number, I'm convinced it fits with perfected unity a LOT better than all the splinter groups still within the Roman umbrella who
have to make sound as though they are in agreement when they are often enough fiercely at each other's throats not unlike some protestant groups are.
The contention that the Roman sect is one great homogeneous, harmoneous around the Great Papa's robe hems . . . is at best a gross deception; at least a delusion or illusion and quite possibly a lie from the pit.
7- and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
8- And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.
9- And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
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NOW, NOW! You should know better! You can't go teaching your own children about God. It's unglobalist! It's anti-Hillarian! It's proFreedom and Pro Constitution! Oh, Horrors! CALL OUT THE NEA! CALL OUT GEORGE SOROS! CALL OUT SCUBA TEDDY! CALL OUT SHRILLERY'S GOONS! We have to put a stop to this.
Oh, I know, Call the Roman hierarchy. They are getting pretty good at smothering, shredding and out right killing the truth amongst believers. They'll quiet this nonsense down and get kids back into at least the curia's indoctrination cells. Not quite as good as the secular humanist's indoctrination cells but close enough. It's all bureaucratic and being consumed by and in a big bureaucracy. That's a small enough step toward the global government. That will train them well enough in group think.
Wow --- How many pages? almost 3000. The Magisterium loves to multiply their own words. If only they knew how to rightly divide as well.
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INDEED!
Great work.
Thanks.
My suspicion is that his psychology had more to do with his changes than his research with The Fathers.
Sad he turned a whole flock back to TRADITION vs more to Christ.
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