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“Reads like more RC institutional monopolistic elitist arrogance, to me.”
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Correct. Much of the same is expressed when many talk about the Eucharist (the Mass). Many get all mystical sounding about it and claim some kind of superior emotion and almost spooky sounding experience when they eat the bread and then the priest drinks the hooch (Oh, excuse me, consecrated hooch). By the way, Do the people drink “His Blood,” or only the priest class.?

Many who have fallen into the modern (unbiblical) notions of sign gifts do the same when talking about “tongues” and ecstatic experiences. They get very proud of themselves for being possessed with some kind of wild fire of which the Bible says nothing, and blaming it on the Holy Ghost, become very arrogant. Why, if you haven't experienced it, your salad is short a cherry tomato. I use this as an illustration, not intending to raise yet another doctrine on this thread.

People who have walked a long Christian life in fellowship with Jesus Christ and witnessed countless direct unmanipulable answers to prayer and seen miracle after miracle, and a harvest of souls are told that they got shorted on their french fries because they don't take Rome's Mass or own a figurine of Mary holding Jesus sprawled across her lap -— (were she stand she would be 25% taller than Him).

Emotion or mystical experience become matters of only subjective analysis, and in the Lord's work it is unwise to compare ourselves among ourselves in quantities of fruit, for it is God Himself who gives the increase.

Thanks.

Well put.

. . . even to this Pentecostal. LOL.

The Gresham's Law of FR Religious argument again prevails. Bad drives out good.

I am not saying anything as ridiculous as someone's getting shorted on fries for not being catholic.

However, since you bring that kind of tendentious nonsense up, eat THIS: A friend years ago left the Assemblies to become Catholic and marry. When her young husband suffered a debilitating stroke which has changed the life and fortunes and all the rest of his whole family, her lovely, warm, supporting, AG family, obviously far, FAR spiritually above the Catholics you know, told her that his stroke was God's wrath on her for her conversion.

Nice, huh? What an example for the rest of us. Would you like fried with that?

Before we get to the content part of today's show, I'd like to point out that it is a sophistry (that's a descriptive term, not a vague generic putdown) to overstate the contention of one's opponent and then argue NOT against what the opponent says but against the overstatement. I suppose one can win a debate doing that. But one loses the truth. That loss seems small beer to many.

Now for those who would care to discuss ideas:

There is a definable difference between the theosis contemplated by our Orthodox brethren and, say, the JW's vision of the destiny of those who do not make the A-team of !44k in the next life. One the on hand we have ever increasing unity with God. On the other, who knows what? Cook outs and A California climate in the new earth?

The RC presentation of Mary, whether one agrees with it or not, is that she is, by the Grace of God, a sort of proleptic eschatological figure, "the first fruits of the second fruits," who "currently" enjoys what is promised to all the elect.

So what she enjoys in our view, is something which Protestants seem not only to deny but to reprehend in the thinking of the Orthodox and Catholics, namely an increasing sharing with the redeemed by God of all that He is and does, and that means His power.

So: The Orthodox are rebuked in fiery terms of righteous anger for proclaiming theosis. Several Protestants insist that though John says, "...we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is," but we dare not use our heads to conceive what that must mean.

Then when I acknowledge that Protestants strongly DENY the hope of the Orthodox and DENY the thinking of the Catholic, then I am taken to task for acknowledging their point of view! I am an elitist because I take them at their word, the humble, non-institutional, shattered into 20k pieces Protestants who won't take yes for an answer, but care so much for the down-trodden that they cannot refrain from telling a sorrowing woman her husband is ill because she's a Catholic, so it's her fault.

(The point of that story is NOT to say Protestants are wicked. It's to point out that if we want to find atrocities on this side or that, we can find them and milk them. And won't that be a useful conversation! Not.)

I agree with all you’ve said. It’s as if one water and a sip of wine could make up for all some of us have seen and walked through in our 30-40-50 and more years of walking with and serving the Lord. Cheez. What deception,.

I agree with all you’ve said. It’s as if one wafer and a sip of wine could make up for all some of us have seen and walked through in our 30-40-50 and more years of walking with and serving the Lord. Cheez. What deception,.