Posted on 01/05/2010 9:46:47 PM PST by the_conscience
I just witnessed a couple of Orthodox posters get kicked off a "Catholic Caucus" thread. I thought, despite their differences, they had a mutual understanding that each sect was considered "Catholic". Are not the Orthodox considered Catholic? Why do the Romanists get to monopolize the term "Catholic"?
I consider myself to be Catholic being a part of the universal church of Christ. Why should one sect be able to use a universal concept to identify themselves in a caucus thread while other Christian denominations need to use specific qualifiers to identify themselves in a caucus thread?
A loge!
Oooooh...
And you?
Euh...nosebleed seats.
Lazy bastard!
Please show me where I've defined what others believe. I've stated what is in scriptures. You are either a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness. You can't be both.
If God commands you to repent, and you do, you are doing God’s will. ...Did God mean For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in [me] will not be put to shame”, or did He mean “Everyone I give belief to will not be put to shame.”
This is only half of the Augustine's argument. I would suggest reading A Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints.
Of course God calls people to repentance. God always calls people to repentance. Noah preached for 120 years all the while he was building an ark that God had commanded would only carry 7 people. As Augustine pointed out God says:
Eze 36:26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
You see, God COULD have inspired Paul to write it YOUR way...but he didn’t.
I would suggest you are only reading half of Augustine's prayer. God commands everyone to repent. But until God opens up our ears and eyes, we simply cannot hear or see.
Look again...does it say God gave belief to Abram?...That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.”
Abraham is one of my favorite examples. I don't have time to dwell on this but please note the reference you are quoting is with the promise of a son-approximately 17 years after God saved Abraham. Abraham "grew" in his faith. He was already saved.
As for the more pointed question whether God gave Abraham his faith, the answer is yes. Faith is a gift from God (1 Cor 12:9). There is nothing you have received that has not been given to you, including your faith.
Here is a reference from the London Baptist Confession of 1644:
XXII.
That Faith is the84 gift of God wrought in the hearts of the elect by the Spirit of God, whereby they come to see, know, and believe the truth of85 the Scriptures, and not only so, but the excellency of them above all other writings and things in the world, as they hold forth the glory of God in his attributes, the excellency of Christ in his nature and offices, and the power of the fullness of the Spirit in its workings and operations; and thereupon are enabled to cast the weight of their souls upon this truth thus believed.
XXIII.
Those that have this precious faith wrought in them by the Spirit, can never finally nor totally fall away; and though many storms and floods do arise and beat against them, yet they shall never be able to take them off that foundation and rock which by faith they are fastened upon, but shall be kept by the power of God to salvation, where they shall enjoy their purchased possession, they being formerly engraven upon the palms of God's hands.86
XXIV.
That faith is ordinarily87 begot by the preaching of the Gospel, or word of Christ, without respect to88 any power or capacity in the creature, but it is wholly89 passive, being dead in sins and trespasses, doth believe, and is converted by no less power,90 than that which raised Christ from the dead.
London Baptist Confession of 1644
As the confession points our, our faith is of God and raised of God.
When you get your scriptural knowledge at the feet of people who professionally pick the pockets of the people, what can we really expect? Trying to catch up in this morass of ineptitude, I am struck by just how non Christian so many of these self described Christians really are. How many of them hold non or anti Christian beliefs. How many of them really don’t have a clue as to Christianity.
Now I will gladly be the street sweeper in heaven if it comes to that! But as to what the rewards will be, that is a good question. Dante and much popular Catholic speculation has graduated levels of heaven. In Dante's book it was modeled off of the planets. Lutheran's typically don't really speculate to much on that (despite the joke that my grandfather will be a farmer, as that was his greatest love and vocation).
I wish you would stick with color=navy rather than color=blue.
It’s less irritating as I scroll on by the gibberish.
As I understand their rationalized rantings . . .
The Magicsterical’s political, bureaucratic, power mongering pontifications about
!!!!TRADITION!!!!
EITHER TRUMP OR EQUAL SCRIPTURE.
Of course, there’s enough duplicity in such documents that all manner of
contradictions with Scripture can be articulated.
However, none of the faithful can even “see” such, much less admit such even in the privacy of confronting their own mirrors.
Their whole eternal desiny is defined as the INSTITUTION being essentially infallible.
They can’t allow any cracks . . . else they threaten the whole edifice.
But then, that’s my understanding.
A long list of rabid clique members of such folks will insist that I’m far more delusional that Alice’s Red Queen so why listen to a thing I have to write.
LOL.
The dead are aware of nothing.
####
I don’t KNOW that.
Scripture talks about the “cloud of witnesses.”
However, from that to saying the departed believers intercede for us as Saints is an enormous stretch.
There is also an easy confusion between righteousness with good and unrighteousness with evil.
I’ve found the doctrines of the Bible to address CHAOS, COSMOS, as Disorder and Order/World.
KAKOS, or worthless is also translated as evil, in contrast to AGATHOS, as good, which might be better translated as having virtue.
It is possible to have order in a ‘worldly’ system, as well as one which is righteous (DIKAIOS) in contrast to sinful (HARMARTOLOS) or (ANOMOLOS) lawless.
For example, one might be a member of the mafia, an order of lawlessness, which acts independent of legitimate authority, or there might even be counterauthorities in the mafia, in reaction to corrupt authority (illegitimate judges and law enforcement who have corrupted legitimate authority), seeking to establish order which is good in their own eyes.
IMHO, the best way to begin that study is by first while in fellowship with God, to read Scripture, possibly even performing word studies with a Strong’s concordance, and using internet study tools such as e-Sword to look up corresponding Greek and Hebrew terms, and rereading verses in context with those particular word studies. Above all letting God the Holy Spirit guide your thinking as reading Scripture and those word studies, thereby slowly building faith upon faith, first in the human spirit, then studying to sanctify and build the soul on sound doctrine/faith.
Oh, most vociferous FReeper bro, now you’ve done it.
They further stated that allah is great is a lie from the pits of Hell. I have heard three former Muslims state
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
unequivocally that allahu akbar is comparative linguistically.
Okay....the old testament was in Hebrew and the new testament in Greek.
Translators translated the writings into English. There are quite a few versions of these writings; however, the message is the same.
God himself created the different languages, Genesis 11. He also wants all of us to understand His word...2 Peter 1:20-21, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, Exodus 17:14; 24:12, 16: 34:27.
Just a few examples as to God commanding His word to be written.
There's enough irony in that post to build a huge fleet of USS RONALD REAGAN class carriers!
I don’t recall hiring you as my style coach.
And given your great compassions toward me . . .
No tradition of men here. Just me and my Bible.
Examples:
...the dead are not dead.
...situations that arise between the living does not
exclude the dead.
...the dead are with us.
...the dead are better suited to pray.
...the church needs to see devotion to the dead.
...if you petition the dead you've found a friend.
and this list could go on. So it had to have begun somewhere when it infiltrated the church. Do you know of a source of reference outside the scripture?.. because scripture is clear about not doing this, so of course it came from some other source. What is the model or place that this began? I'd appreciate a book or something that would perhaps point to who and where and when this began.
Thanks.
Now I've gone and done it. Thankfully the LORD has me in His hand.
As far as what is blasphemy against the Spirit, I have yet to find a commentator that has given a clear definition.
I haven't been able to figure this out yet either.
I’m about to knock it off for the night, but...
Ezekial 18:
“30”Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, declares the Lord GOD. Repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin. 31 Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? 32 For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord GOD; so turn, and live.””
Ezekial 36:
24 I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. 28 You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.
You see contradiction - “You’ll notice that these two verses are opposites.”
I see the same thing. Why? Because I believe that if they repent “Repent and turn from all your transgressions” they will “make [them]selves a new heart and a new spirit” because God will “give [them] a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within [them]”.
If we repent, we receive. It is from God when we repent.
Matthew Henry puts it:
We have here the conclusion and application of this whole matter. After a fair trial at the bar of right reason the verdict is brought in on God’s side; it appears that his ways are equal. Judgment therefore is next to be given; and one would think it should be a judgment of condemnation, nothing short of Go, you cursed, into everlasting fire. But, behold, a miracle of mercy; the day of grace and divine patience is yet lengthened out; and therefore, though God will at last judge every one according to his ways, yet he waits to be gracious, and closes all with a call to repentance and a promise of pardon upon repentance.
I. Here are four necessary duties that we are called to, all amounting to the same:—1. We must repent; we must change our mind and change our ways; we must be sorry for what we have done amiss and ashamed of it, and go as far as we can towards the undoing of it again. 2. We must turn ourselves from all our transgressions, v. 30 and again v. 32. Turn yourselves, face about; turn from sin, nay, turn against it as the enemy you loathe, turn to God as the friend you love. 3. We must cast away from us all our transgressions; we must abandon and forsake them with a resolution never to return to them again, give sin a bill of divorce, break all the leagues we have made with it, throw it overboard, as the mariners did Jonah (for it has raised the storm), cast it out of the soul, and crucify it as a malefactor. 4. We must make us a new heart and a new spirit. This was the matter of a promise, ch. xi. 19. Here it is the matter of a precept. We must do our endeavour, and then God will not be wanting to us to give us his grace. St. Austin well explains this precept. Deus non jubet impossibilia, sed jubendo monet et facere quod possis et petere quod non possis—God does not enjoin impossibilities, but by his commands admonishes us to do what is in our power and to pray for what is not.
Another commentator has it: “ Make you a new heart
Call upon God for it, and he will give it: for as sure as you earnestly call on God through Christ to save you, so surely you shall be saved; and the effect will so speedily follow, that God is pleased to attribute that in some sort to yourselves, which is done by his grace alone; because ye earnestly call upon him for it, come in the right way to receive it, and are determined never to rest till you have it.”
If anything, Ezekial 18 adds to the FW side, saying, “32 For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord GOD; so turn, and live.”
No.
I don’t keep track of such nonsense.
I’ve pinged a few who might know.
Or, the
Vatican Affiliates,
Vatican Associated,
Vatican submissives,
Roman Catholics,
Latins,
et al
will certainly have at least someone from the rabid cliques step up to the plate with chapter and verse
justifying all such.
My faint recollection is that they claim early Church Fathers etc.
However, the Church Fathers are all over the place . . . so it’s a picking and choosing what they want to buttress their
!!!!TRADITIONS!!!!
The flesh is persistently resourceful for justifying that which opposes God . . . which
SUPPORTS RELIGION
at the expense of RELATIONSHIP.
. . . IN ALL denominations, RELIGIOUS groups and organizations.
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