My grandmother, raised a Catholic all her eighty some odd years, first heard the Gospel on her deathbed, thank the Good Lord.
pgkdan said:That is a blatant lie.
pgkdan sad to say that isn’t a lie.
I met 2 ladies that had been Roman Catholic’s all their lives...they went to Catholic schools...faithfully attended Mass...went through all the motions the church offered, but didn’t know Jesus as their Personel Lord and Savior.
They spent hundred of hours listening to sermons, but neither of them understood them, or had a personel relationship with Jesus.
When I first met the ladies they wanted to know why I had so much Joy and Peace. I’m a born-again Christian who found Jesus just by reading my Bible.
When I started sharing with them what the Bible said they started reading their Bibles, (they said they were always discouraged against reading the Bible themselves?)
They both accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior, became filled with the Holy Spirit and started telling all their friends about Jesus.
They had always pictured Jesus as a dead Jesus hanging on the cross. Once He became alive to them it changed their lives.
They had no idea that they were going to have eternal lives in either Heaven or Hell. Heaven and Hell weren’t real places to them. They only knew about purgatory and that they were to pray for those folks that were there.
They didn’t know they’d someday have a perfect ressurected body just like Jesus has now. To them the idea of Heaven would be just floating around on a cloud somewhere.
They didn’t know “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord”. They thought they’d be laying in a grave somewhere until the end of time.
They didn’t know they could just ask God themselves for the forgiveness of their sins.
They had no idea about Jewish customs in Jesus time.
They knew nothing about The Rapture and how it compares to The Jewish Wedding.
http://www.godonthe.net/evidence/marriage.htm
http://www.waitingforjesus.com/therapture.html
They didn’t know anything about Bible Prophecy. And how God told us in the last days there would be a one world religion.
In fact that’s how I was able to talk with them about the Bible.
They had been deceived into going to “A Course in Miracles” (The garbage that Oprah’s teaching right now) and this was many, many years ago when they went.
They were empty and searching for something to fill the void. I was able to show them that this was a New Age teaching and not from God.
So I’m just saying these two ladies didn’t get anything out of going to school, or church for all those years. It wasn’t until they read the Bible for themselves that they finally found Peace & Joy...after they found Jesus.
Please know I’m not bashing anyone’s religion or faith...I just understand how someone could go through their entire life, and not have a personel relationship with Jesus.
Yes, there are some Catholics like that.
And there are no doubt many more who do have a “personal relationship with Jesus” and do know about heaven and hell and do know how to pray and most especially, they know how to love one another in this world as God has loved them for all eternity.
My large family and me are Catholics like that and we know of many, many like us.
THANKS for the wonderful testimony.
The HOW it could happen has been repeatedly explained to them.
They are fixated at the idol images stage and can see nor hear nothing save what the RC magicsterical tells them to see and hear.
A most sad condition.
Prayer is best. Sometimes jarring prods pry loose an opening to a stray true thought or two.
But Holy Spirit truly has to be the one to open such eyes and ears.
I’m a Catholic, well catechised because I chose to be, and I will not defend the sorry state of catechism in most American dioceses. As a Catholic, I believe pretty much everything you told those ladies, with a quibble here about the need of sacramental confession (it’s still God who forgives, though), and there about the Rapture (although God is God and can end the world as He pleases, I won’t hang my theological hat on it).
Still, it is not uncommon for a person born to any type of Christianity to spend their whole life not thinking about. Heaven forbid they start thinking about it and find themselves compelled to change their life. It’s so much easier to go on auto-pilot, attend mass, go to prayer meeting, make all the motions while your brain gets on with that cool plot twist on TV last night and what on earth did that woman two rows up do to her hair. That’s more a function of the human capacity for self-deception than whichever religion they’re coasting through.
There’s no one like a human for the ability to keep two conflicting thoughts in their head without questioning the paradox. Why do you think there are so many liberals around?
Then one day (hopefully) they get confronted by the fact that all this “God stuff” is real, and impacts their lives, and will effect the eternity of which this life on earth is not even a second- and it’s gobsmacking, like a punch in the gut while someone pulls the rug out from under you. It’s like falling in love. The trick is to keep it up when the novelty and fervor wear off.
I wish it had been a well educated Catholic who had struck up that conversation with your two ladies (although it might not have had the same effect, it’s the everyday that gets disdained, the new that catches the eye), but ANY sort of Christianity is better than that secular, new age, dumber-than-pagan, demonic psudeo-religion.