Posted on 01/27/2008 7:56:14 PM PST by Manfred the Wonder Dawg
January 25, 2008
ESV Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
In recent days I have spent time in Lima and Sullana Peru and Mexico City and I have discovered that people by nature are the same. Man has a heart that is inclined to selfishness and idolatry. Sin abounds in the remotest parts of the land because the heart is desperately wicked. Thousands bow before statues of Mary and pray to her hoping for answers. I have seen these people stare hopelessly at Mary icons, Jesus icons, and a host of dead saints who will do nothing for them. I have talked with people who pray to the pope and say that they love him. I talked with one lady who said that she knew that Jesus was the Savior, but she loved the pope. Thousands bow before Santa Muerte (holy death angel) in hopes that she will do whatever they ask her. I have seen people bring money, burning cigarettes, beer, whiskey, chocolate, plants, and flowers to Santa Muerte in hopes of her answers. I have seen these people bowing on their knees on the concrete in the middle of public places to worship their idol. Millions of people come into the Basilica in Mexico City and pay their money, confess their sins, and stare hopelessly at relics in hope that their sins will be pardoned. In America countless thousands are chained to baseball games, football games, material possessions, and whatever else their heart of idols can produce to worship.
My heart has broken in these last weeks because the God of heaven is not honored as he ought to be honored. People worship the things that are created rather than worshiping the Creator. God has been gracious to all mankind and yet mankind has hardened their hearts against a loving God. God brings the rain on the just and unjust. God brings the beautiful sunrises and sunsets upon the just and unjust. God gives good gifts unto all and above all things he has given his Son that those who would believe in him would be saved. However, man has taken the good things of God and perverted them unto idols and turned their attention away from God. I get a feel for Jesus as he overlooked Jerusalem or Paul as he beseeched for God to save Israel. When you accept the reality of the truth of the glory of God is breaks your heart that people would turn away from the great and awesome God of heaven to serve lesser things. Moses was outraged by the golden calf, the prophets passionately preached against idolatry, Jesus was angered that the temple was changed in an idolatrous business, and Paul preached to the idolaters of Mars Hill by telling them of the unknown God.
I arrived back at home wondering how I should respond to all the idolatry that I have beheld in these last three weeks. I wondered how our church here in the states should respond to all of the idolatry in the world. What are the options? First, I suppose we could sit around and hope that people chose to get their life together and stop being idolaters. However, I do not know how that could ever happen apart from them hearing the truth. Second, I suppose we could spend a lifetime studying cultural issues and customs in hope that we could somehow learn to relate to the people of other countries. However, the bible is quite clear that all men are the same. Men are dead in sin, shaped in iniquity, and by nature are the enemies of God. Thirdly, we could pay other people or other agencies to go and do a work for us while we remain comfortably in the states. However, there is no way to insure that there will be doctrinal accuracy or integrity. If we only pay other people to take the gospel we will miss out on all of the benefits of being obedient to the mission of God. Lastly, we could seek where God would have us to do a lasting work and then invest our lives there for the glory of God. The gospel has the power to raise the dead in any culture and we must be willing to take the gospel wherever God would have us take it. It is for sure that our church cannot go to every country and reach every people group, so we must determine where God would have us work and seek to be obedient wherever that is.
It seems that some doors are opening in the Spanish speaking countries below us and perhaps God is beginning to reveal where we are to work. There are some options for work to be partnered with in Peru and there could be a couple of options in Mexico. The need is greater than I can express upon this paper for a biblical gospel to be proclaimed in Peru and Mexico. Oh, that God would glorify his great name in Peru and Mexico by using a small little church in a town that does not exist to proclaim his great gospel amongst a people who desperately need the truth.
I give thanks to the LORD for allowing me the privilege of going to these countries and broadening my horizons. The things that I have seen will be forever engraved upon my heart. I will long remember the pastors that I spent time with in Peru and I will never forget Adolfo who translated for me in Mexico. I will relish the time that I spent with Paul Washer and the others. When I think of church I will forever remember being on top of that mountain in Sullana at that church which had no electricity and no roof. I am convinced that heaven was looking down on that little church on top of that mountain and very few people on earth even know that it exist. Oh, God I pray that the things of this world will continue to grow dim and that God’s people will be caught up in his glorious presence.
Because of the truth: Pastor: J. Randall Easter II Timothy 2:19 "Our God is in heaven and does whatever He pleases."(Ps. 115:3) "He predestined us according to the good pleasure of His will."(Eph. 1:5) Those who have been saved have been saved for His glory and they are being made holy for this is the will of God. Are you being made holy? Spurgeon says, "If your religion does not make you holy it will damn you to hell."
Technically no. You folks seem to make a technicality out of everything so I would assume you would appreciate the irony of it. As it has been stated numerous times there have only been seven ecumenical councils involving all of the Roman and Eastern Orthodox churches. None of these dealt with the canon of Scripture. I believe in large part because it was largely understood what it was.
For example Jerome had started his translation prior to the Synod of Hippo. If it was not well established how would he have known which books to translate?
The western church headquartered in Rome seems to make a habit of overstating it's role in things. I'm sure it has been successful in it's claims in the past because it had a near monopoly on speech and the power of the state to back it. All these claims have been revealed for what they are with the freedom to read Scripture individually and to discuss openly thoughts about what they reveal and what the historical record shows.
“So the Council of Hippo, followed by Carthage, Trent and a second Carthage (over which Augustine presided) weren’t binding?”
No, in fact they weren’t binding, except locally, MBS.
“The term Catholic first is documented about 100 AD. The early Christians called themselves a lot of things. They most certainly didn’t call themselves Baptists or Presbyterians or Anglicans or...”
The term was first used by +Ignatius of Antioch. Its alternately amusing and irritating the way the Roman Church has used this historical fact. When +Ignatius used the term, he meant that the Church was the universal church. His use of the term had nothing to do with the Church of Rome any more than with the Churchs of Alexandria, Jerusalem or Antioch. Its amusing because it bespeaks a funny lack of understanding of basic Greek and irritating in that it demonstrates a presumption which The Church in the East has decried for nearly 1000 years now. From a purely neutral standpoint, it speaks volumes about the inflated view Rome has had of itself ever since the seat of the Empire moved east.
BTW, Antioch is where people first started calling themselves Christians, but not Catholics.
Here in the west we are observing Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday/Easter this weekend. God Bless all of you.
we have a lot of differences, but we are united by our FAITH in our risen SAVIOUR.
When does the East observed Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday/Easter?
“When does the East observed Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday/Easter?”
Great and Holy Friday will be commemorated on April 25th on the New Calendar, with Pascha being April 27th.
If I forget, forgive me, I pray it is a time of reflection and joy for you.
Tonight we have a passover seder and on Resurrection Sunday we sing hymns of joy and victory.
“If I forget, forgive me, I pray it is a time of reflection and joy for you.”
We look forward to Holy Week and Pascha all year long, wf! Have a blessed Pascha. Remember, “Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!”
Amen.
In the case of the NAB I'd say the truth is DEEP within. Extremely deep. Almost unfathomably deep.
The Vatican has said that valid baptism makes you a member, but distancing one’s self from the Catholic Church may imperil one’s soul.
In nit picking mode: I think it's important to say Baptism is the "ordinary" (that is prescribed by the "order" not in the sense of "everyday" or "usual, though the first sense should lead to the second - uh - ordinarily) means of becoming a Christian (= member of The Church). But it is not the beginning of God's call or the Spirit's action. The guy I'm sponsoring for baptism at the Vigil is certainly ready to give his life to Christ and to accept Him as Lord -- so much so that I'd say "to all intents and purposes" he has done so.And as far as imperiling the soul goes, it would be worse for Forest Keeper or anyone whose conscience (which is more an affair of thought than of "gut feeling") informed by study, prayer, deliberation, consultation with wise and holy people and so forth told him that we are wrong. Following your conscience may lead one to do something wrong, but it is always wrong not to follow one's conscience, I (with Aquinas) would say.
I would say, in the face of corrupt Catholics everywhere and my own manifest, ah, imperfections, that my THINKING is that Dominus Iesus of on the ball, and that the full ministrations of grace, with all the help and "consolations" they can provide are so wonderfully beneficial that to reject them is to lose a lot. And in that way, the peril is increased to those outside the Church.
There are other aspects which are less blatantly supernatural. Accommodating myself to the incredible diversity of people in the RC Church, seeking in the spirit of Romans 14-15 to seek the good of those whose style of piety is different from my own, making myself subject in small things to others, these are good for one, and provide opportunities which with grace can lead to virtue. (So I hear, anyway.)
I guess I"m trying to say that if the best you can do and think leads someone to think we are wrong, then they must not seek to enter into closer union with us. But, I think, in so doing they, miss out on some good stuff.
Of course, they think something similar about us. All I'm trying to do here is to develop the notion of imperiling the soul" Not to say, "We're right and you're not, nyah!"
Much obliged.
Man, in his natural state, has the “free will” to sin or not sin.
We are in agreement on this, Irish. I am not sure your Reformed friends here are, but the Orthodox and Catholic most certainly are.
Man, in a regenerated condition (saved) can choose to sin, not sin, or (and this is what is different) this man can choose to please God. In other words, a saved man has more options, is in fact more free than the unsaved person. No one who is unsaved can CHOOSE to please God in any way.
I am not sure that by being regenerated we gain freedom, since our options actually narrow. In Orthodoxy we like to call the faithful "slaves" or "servants" of Christ; hardly a freedom-evoking concept.
Becoming a servant of God is gaining something immeasurably better while losing something immeasurably worse; so it is an even exchange that is at the same time liberating in a relative sense: it is liberating because we are no longer slaves to flesh and things carnal, indeed the world, but to things spiritual and holy. And this is not something that happens overnight, or in an instant.
We have to die unto ourselves before we can be born again. And from the likes of all of us, we ain't dead yet! Pride rules supreme in all of us to a greater to lesser extent. We continue to sin. We continue to give God crumbs while He gives us in abundance.
We also continue to exercise our will and make choices that aim at pleasing please us more than God. Do we give everything and all to the world and we give all of us to God? Of course not! Some don't even find time to give God an hour of their Sunday, especially if it interferes with sports!
Pleasing God should never be a choice, Irish. It should be unquestionable priority, not once a week but every minute of ever our lives. If we truly loved God above everything else, we would never tire of trying to please Him, we would never think of ourselves first, or anything earthly. But, do we?
Fortunately, we believe that God is not subject to pleasures, nor for that matter to anything or anyone. Our will is either in harmony with His or isn't. The degree or the proportion to which it is in harmony with His will, is the degree or proportion to which we have become Christ-like. And that is the degree to which we have been saved.
That is absolutely, one hundred percent correct, wmfights. The Eastern Church did not include the Book of Revelation into the canon until the end of the 9th century. Until that time, it was listed as "questionable" in the Church of Constantinople.
However, save for this one book, which the Orthodox to this day do not read publicly in church (which would technically make is non-canonical), all the New Testament books of the Third Council of Carthage are accepted universally as the Christian canon by all Christians to this day.
This agreement is not a legal obligation, as it would have been if the Bible had been canonized by an ecumenical council, and you make that point perfectly.
I very much regret if you have decided that is true for yourself.
We don't have a choice vis a vis God's rationality, FK. The Creation is the way it is whether you like it or not. You learn to live with it. It's not a matter of reason. If an asteroid is bound to hit the earth, there is nothing whatsoever we can do about it to stop it. Reason does not rule the Creation. And if it is reason, it's not our reason.
It is God's reason and you just don't want to participate. That is your choice.
The only thing irrational is for the Reformed to try to stuff God into our limited rational box and make him fit our finite minds.
The Reformed don't need to do that, nor do we try to do so. I think that some Apostolics have a seemingly innate need to define God out of existence in order to then redefine Him back into what they want. NONE of us are falling for that. :)
There is nothing rational about God as far as humans are concerned.
NO, the best you can say is that there is nothing rational about God that YOU understand.
Even the concept of God itself is irrational.
Only if one is predisposed against the concept of God. This is the place in which most humans live.
Our minds do not comprehend eternal and limitless. We have to accept it on faith, not reason.
You destroy reason since you cannot have ALL OF IT. By your own standards, there is no reason in the universe I should even consider the truth of your faith. And my understanding is that you shouldn't care less, as an Orthodox layman.
FK: "I very much regret if you have decided that is true for yourself."
"God is the only Being that truly is - the only eternal and immutable Being - who neither receives being from non-being nor returns to non-being; who is Tri-hypostatic and Almighty." +Gregory Palamas
"Who can make an imitation of the invisible, incorporeal, uncircumscribed, formless God? Therefore to give form to the Deity is the height of folly and impiety. And hence it is that in the Old Testament the use of images was not common, but after God in His bowels of pity became in truth man for our salvation, not as He was seen by Abraham in the semblance of a man, nor as He was seen by the prophets, but in being truly man, and after He lived upon the earth and dwelt among men, worked miracles, suffered, was crucified, rose again and was taken back to Heaven, since all these things actually took place and were seen by men, they were all written for the remembrance and instruction of us who were not alive at that time in order that though we saw not, we may still, hearing and believing, obtain the blessing of the Lord." +John of Damascus
FK, you really do need to reread On the Incarnation. The whole point of the Incarnation was so mankind could relate in a meaningful manner to "Ο ΩΝ" and thus have the ability to fulfill its created purpose. What Kosta has stated is completely patristic. Now, if in fact you accept the "Ancient of Days" image of The Father as the white bearded old man as being fully factual, then I can see how you could be shocked or dismayed at Kosta's remark, but he is expressing nothing that The Church hasn't always believed.
A Blessed Pascha to you, FK.
When I was a child in the Anglican Church, we recited the Nicene Creed ...
The word “Catholic” is in the Nicene Creed...
“I believe in one Catholic and Apostolic Church”
We were taught then that it merely means “universal”...
“We were taught then that it merely means “universal”...”
You were taught right...but then again, I’d expect nothing less from Anglicans “of an age”, Nana! : A Blessed Pascha to you and yours!
"No one comes to the Father except through me." [John 14:6]
We don't have a choice vis a vis God's rationality, FK. The Creation is the way it is whether you like it or not. You learn to live with it. It's not a matter of reason.
FK: It is God's reason and you just don't want to participate. That is your choice.
Participation is not reason, FK.
Kosta: The only thing irrational is for the Reformed to try to stuff God into our limited rational box and make him fit our finite minds.
The Reformed don't need to do that, nor do we try to do so. I think that some Apostolics have a seemingly innate need to define God out of existence in order to then redefine Him back into what they want. NONE of us are falling for that.
The Reformed not only re-invented God, they even re-invented the "chruch." Talk about a thorn in one's eye!
Kosta: There is nothing rational about God as far as humans are concerned.
FK: NO, the best you can say is that there is nothing rational about God that YOU understand
I must admit, I am limited to my own capacities. Unlike others...who claim to "understand" the divine.
Kosta: Even the concept of God itself is irrational.
FK: Only if one is predisposed against the concept of God. This is the place in which most humans live.
If the concept of God could be grasped through reason, people would have arrived at it without Christ. Apprently, you believe that Christ was not necessary to make our relationship with God meaninful, let alone rational (for Incarnation and Resurrection are anything but rational).
Kosta: Our minds do not comprehend eternal and limitless. We have to accept it on faith, not reason.
FK: You destroy reason since you cannot have ALL OF IT. By your own standards, there is no reason in the universe I should even consider the truth of your faith
Our reason is limited and corrupted through human fall, FK. We do not know God's reason. Christ came to restore our likeness to God by imitating Him in love, not to "figure out" God.
The degree of our salvation is proportional to the degree to which our will is in harmony with His.
Not that we can ever achieve absolute harmony, which is why we believe that God, in His infinite mercy, pardons us even if we honestly failed—as long as we honestly tried. It's love, not logic, FK.
Thank you, Kolo. Without Christ, no image of God is meaningful or true or possible.
I am shocked that there are Christians who would even suggest otherwise.
A Blessed Pascha (Passover) and Easter to you and yours also..!
Thank you gentlemen.
I was of another opinion that proved to be false. I am indebted.
The document of the Carthagenian Canon (Canonum Ecclesiæ Africanæ) specifically states that the accepted canonized books were quia a patribus ista accepimus in ecclesia legenda”, namely those "traditionally read in African churches." The Cabon represents those books read traditionally in African churches, not the universal (catholic) Church.
This document is unfortunately also showing signs of latter-day changes. First, it post facto attributes the Book of Hebrews to St. Paul because the sentence reads "thirteen Epistles of the Apostle Paul, one epistle of the same to the Hebrews," instead (as would be expected) "fourteen Epistles of Apostles Paul." The word "same" was an afterthought.
The document also says "Let this be made known also to our brother and fellow-priest Boniface, or to other bishops of those parts, for the purpose of confirming that Canon."
Pope Boniface succeeded Pope Siricius (the first Roman Bishop to use the title "pope") in 418 AD, so this indicates that the document is probably altered after that year.
Also note the way the Council addresses the Pope: "our fellow priest" (consacerdoti nostro), and not "His Holiness."
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