We are encouraged to be ready in season and out of season to reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. IITim 4:2. I am reproving you, rebuking you right now. That God may or may not grant you eyes to see and ears to hear is up to Him. And, you are correct, my words are not the thing effecting change...only God does that. The words may be used or may not be used.
"Too, what makes you so certain that you belong to the exclusive club of God’s chosen? What guarantee do you have that you’ll persevere to the end?
The term "certain" is not really something we worry about. We find the trace elements of the faith described in the Scriptures, namely the abandonment of reliance upon anything but the unmerited favor of Christ, to be sufficient. I trust you are not relying upon a group of ceremonies and enrollment on an Italian membership list to be "certainty" for your eternal destination...are you?
"What do you say when you evangelize? “I’m compelled to share the Gospel, but it may not matter. You could be one of those who’ve been preselected by God for damnation.”
What I say is what I am saying right now. Jesus the Nazarene, the Messiah of Israel, is the Living God who came to fulfill the Law and rescue those whom the Father has given Him. If you sense that your brokenness is so complete as to render you hopeless and helpless, unless He reaches to you, then you may be among those for whom this adoption is reserved. Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection accomplishes two important objectives for His chosen:
1. It forgives once and for all time your sins AND the fact that you are built with a sinful nature that will continue to sin. There are no ceremonies, no rituals, no incantations, no confessions, no anything that can induce Him to do this. No wafers, no wine can recreate this sacrificial event. Should Jesus determine to do this for you, you will no longer be guilty in the eyes of God.
2. It clothes you in His righteousness. It would not be enough for you to just be forgiven, as good as that would be. In order to stand before the Father, we must be holy. Since we do not possess that, Christ's holiness is what a believer must be wrapped in to make them presentable. The time will come in heaven when He remakes you into a holy creature, but we will need Christ's holiness until that happens.
If you want this, and you are among the elect, then Christ has regenerated you imbuing you with faith. You are being saved. You will receive His Holy Spirit as downpayment of the continual and future care He intends to provide you. And ultimately you will see life like you have never known when you leave this earthly tent.
There are no mediators between you and Christ, no alter christus, no "priests" in the sense the Roman church wishes to claim. Every believer is a "priest" in that they can deliver words to other people. But, only God determines whether those will effect a change and only God effects the change.
There is no penance to perform, there is no pergatory to dread, there is no anything, but Christ. Grace really is "unmerited favor", a gift given to those God decides to rescue. If you find this happening in you, then fellowship with other believers regularly to understand how this message is throughout the Scriptures. You will grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ and look forward to the hope laid up for us. Enjoy your Savior.
That is what I say when I speak to those asking...and you asked. Thus, I am evangelizing you right now. Does this ring true? Perhaps you are among the elect and will abandon the paganized, ritualistic, sacerdotalism and ceremony of Rome and return to the simple fellowship with other believers.
"If that’s the true Gospel, I want no part of it.
Perhaps not.
We are encouraged to be ready in season and out of season to reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. IITim 4:2. I am reproving you, rebuking you right now. That God may or may not grant you eyes to see and ears to hear is up to Him. The words may be used or may not be used.
Which is to say, that you're commanded to be ready to do something that has absolutely no impact? That God commands you to perform empty actions as a mere sign of obedience?
I trust you are not relying upon a group of ceremonies and enrollment on an Italian membership list to be "certainty" for your eternal destination...are you?
I'm rolling my eyes... no Catholic trusts in rituals, as though mere external actions can effect a conversion of the heart and a turning toward Him in repentance to have our sins forgiven. Many, many previous answers by fellow Catholics have made it clear that we rely solely upon the unmerited favor of Our Lord who calls us out of His goodness to respond to Him in obedience for the salvation of our souls. What sort of God "wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim 2:4) but then decides - positively wills vs. permits - that there will be some who have absolutely no chance of being saved? What a strange, capricious God - it almost reminds me of the false god of Islam, who is a slave-master rather than the loving Father described to us in sacred scripture.
And what sort of God would make a covenant that was MORE restrictive than the one it replaces? What sort of God would determine that all male children had the right to be members of the household of God through the ritual observance of circumcision, and then, while seemingly broadening the covenant to worldwide scope, suddenly reveal that there were some who would never, by His will, be permitted to taste the fruits of that covenant?
That is what I say when I speak to those asking...and you asked. Thus, I am evangelizing you right now. Does this ring true? Perhaps you are among the elect and will abandon the paganized, ritualistic, sacerdotalism and ceremony of Rome and return to the simple fellowship with other believers.
But again, your words will have no impact either way, right? If I'm set aside to one day repent and see the gospel as you describe it (a twisted, cruel, capricious gospel at that), then you're wasting your words evangelizing at all. You're merely robotically going about your pre-programmed duty, bouncing words off of myself and my fellow Catholics who may or may not be pre-programmed to join you in your strange version of heaven in which some are predestined to hell before ever having the chance to understand, repent, accept, love and obey Our Lord.
To folks like you (and I've encountered TONS of folks like you since going public with my conversion), it doesn't matter that I've been able to rid myself of sins that I'd been committing my entire life, or that I'm more devoted to the reading of sacred scripture and daily prayer, or that I'm more committed to serving my fellow Christians through teaching and pro-life ministry, than I ever was before I left evangelical Protestantism. I don't believe in the monstrous, anti-Biblical concept of double-predestination, or the foundational error of sola scriptura on which you base your twisted view of God and salvation history, and thus I'm probably condemned. And there's nothing I can do about it, and nothing you can do about it, and nothing anyone else can do about it.
And we're the ones who have something to escape? Please.