Posted on 01/14/2011 5:57:52 PM PST by topcat54
Evangelical book catalogs promote books such as Planet Earth: The Final Chapter, The Great Escape, and the Left Behind series. Bumper stickers warn us that the vehicle’s occupants may disappear at any moment. It is clear that there is a preoccupation with the idea of a secret rapture. Perhaps this has become more pronounced recently due to the expectation of a new millennium and the fears regarding potential Y2K problems. Perhaps psychologically people are especially receptive to the idea of an imminent, secret rapture at the present time. Additionally, many Christians are not aware that any other position relative to the second coming of Jesus Christ exists. Even in Reformed circles there are numerous people reading these books. Many of these people are unaware that this viewpoint conflicts with Scripture and Reformed Theology.
(Excerpt) Read more at reformed.org ...
What’s very interesting is that those figures correlate very well with what ex-Catholics know to be true experientially.
We’ve been telling Catholics all along what we know the average lay Catholic believes and it keeps being denied by the Catholics.
Looks like someone else got the same results.
Well said.
Failure to understand the difference between the Law and the Gospel always leads to works righteousness/legalism. Makes no difference if it’s the stereotypical Baptist railing against the evils of movies and cards or Catholics thinking their “good works” (known Biblically as filthy rags) will save them.
Only the Gospel can save.
We’ve been telling Catholics all along what we know the average lay Catholic believes and it keeps being denied by the Catholics.
Looks like someone else got the same results.
A LOT of someone else’s
It’s from a LOT of studies over quite a span of years:
1992-2009.
with Catholics, Lutherans and Methodists being tied at 33%
When I was attending the Catholic church, for most of my life, communion was given at the altar rail. People would knee along the rail and the priest would go down the line from person to person and place the host on their tongue.
When it was dissolved, they would get up and the next person would take their place. Very assembly line in fashion.
Sometime between Christmas and Easter one year, the procedure was changed and communion was given by the people filing up the aisle to the priest, who remained stationary.
Now, this particular year, as Easter rolled around, the church was packed this Sunday. Time comes for communion and more than half the people went to the altar rail to receive communion, as they had done in the past. All the regular attenders were filing up the aisle in the new procedure.
It was total chaos. Nobody knew what to do. The priest had to actually go to the mike and tell people that the method had been changed and they now needed to get in line. He sounded so disgusted.
I remember the event so clearly because I was astounded at the huge number of people who were going up front, pious looking as all get out, who had just revealed that they were the twice a year attenders. A lot of them looked embarrassed about it. Many looked angry.
The point is that Catholic churches are filled with people who don’t attend regularly and don’t take their Catholicism seriously. This image being put forth that all Catholics do and believe such and such is simply not true.
Catholicism is being presented as a united front, and all it is is a front.
Since Mary believed in Her Son, don’t you think she IS now sinless? And doesn’t your God have the ability to see all of time as a volume, so that Mary would be afforded at least the same deference that Abraham received, whose believing/faithing was counted for him ‘righteousness’? ... And for the record, I’m not a Catholic, though I am catholic.
Alleged Catholic priests support pro-abortion, pro-homosexual groups
And we are told, *Once a priest, always a priest*.
Fascinating.
We have had endless INSISTENT RC pontifications on FR about
Yet, we see the inexorable organizational result of such a heretical NONBiblical perspective.
It DEVOLVES into WORKS ONLY pretend righteousness.
Only 9% of Roman Catholics were found to evidently give any nod whatsoever still, to Salvation having anything at all to do with FAITH--even faith with works? GOODNESS! HORRORS!
So . . . now we are down to 180 MILLION RC's who have any hint of a Biblical understanding about Salvation.
Yet this is supposed to be CHRIST'S ONLY AUTHORIZED, TRULY KOSHER, REAL AND EXCLUSIVE ORGANIZATION/ CHURCH which HOLY SPIRIT IS PROTECTING AGAINST THE ASSAULTIVE GATES OF HELL????
WHAT AN INSULTING ASSERTION AGAINST HOLY SPIRIT! He only manages to protect 9%????
What a clueless, blasphemous, blind, idiotic and farcical construction on reality!
How do y'all face your mirrors in the morning and still claim to be Roman Catholic?
There's no rationalizing statistics like these.
The chronic RC fancy footwork and weasel worded rationalizations just won't do.
ABSOLUTELY INDEED.
INCREDIBLE.
Yet we read endless assertions on FR
OBVIOUSLY FALSE
that RC’s do not allow Mary to usurp
ANYTHING OF JESUS’
What farcical denial saturated hideousness.
Well aren’t there a couple of churches in Ca. that cater to homosexuals? Seems I saw or read about that. Rather like some of the Protestant mainliners turning that direction as well.
IMO the church on a whole is in deep trouble these days...though we knew this would come it is very difficult watching it happen daily.
What is interesting is both issues of abortion and homosexuality are sexual issues...NOT choice issues after the fact.... The choice is made when and who one engages in sex with. Everything else stems from that point.
Dr. Grossman: a Catholic Funded Abortionist in Colorado’s Four Corners
Catholic nurse ordered to help with abortion
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=104707
INTERESTING . . .
What’s that THUNDEROUS SILENCE
we hear from the RC’s this evening?
Was there a special at WalMart on brain enhancement?
Can they now recognize when the evidence and arguments are beyond their rationally, effectively responding with the usual
FETID, STINKING TRIPE?
Truly, it always comes down to:
Who do you believe?
Who do you trust?
As for me, I simply love God, believe Him and trust Him.
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second [is] like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. – Matthew 22:35-40
God's Name is I AM.
I agree. But when you and I saw what our true condition was before God and fell upon his throne of grace through faith in Jesus Christ, it is important to also note that we did not stop trying to live a good, obedient life but that the MOTIVE changed. I think what has prevented people in the past and even today from accepting this truth is they think if you tell someone nothing they do other than believe and trust in Jesus can save them, they fear it is essentially telling them they can go live as they please since only grace saves us. Like giving someone a "license to sin".
Paul address this very same way of thinking when he said:
Romans 6:1-4
What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
Not only are we created anew unto a life of good deeds, but we also now have the power through the indwelling Holy Spirit to resist sin and live according to the way that brings glory to God.
A false Gospel that teaches man must earn eternal life through deeds fails for two reasons. First we cannot be saved by any works because sin is only paid for by death - our own or Christ for us, in our place. And secondly, we are helpless against the old nature without the new birth and the Holy Spirit. We can see from history how many people struggled against sin their entire lives even resorting to horrible self-mutilations and dire penances in hopes of quelling the evil within. How much more fruitful could their lives have been if only they understood the truth?
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