Posted on 07/26/2013 7:56:13 PM PDT by marshmallow
Fatima, Harissa, Damascus, Samalut, Assiut, Zeitun and many other places where the Virgin appeared are the destination of incessant pilgrimages from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iran. Pilgrims in search of physical but also spiritual healing; spontaneous and mystical prayer and not the schematic and formal verses of official Islam. The iconoclast Salafists destroy places of pilgrimage every year. But the devotion to Mary is growing, also fueled by the stories of the Koran. The spiritual dialogue between Christians and Muslims is much more promising than cultural, theological or political dialogue.
Beirut (AsiaNews) - Each year millions of Muslims come on pilgrimage to the Catholic Marian shrines. Not only to the major shrines such as Fatima in Portugal or Harissa in Lebanon, but also to Egypt, Syria, Iran. Muslims - especially Muslim women - go to give thanks to the Madonna or great Christian saints, like St. Charbel or St. George.
In the eyes of many Westerners these gestures seem ridiculous or false: they speak of apparitions, of prayers, but then there are massacres, killings, violence in the name of religion!
Like it or not, the religious phenomenon is alive in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia. When you see millions of Hindus go to bathe in the dirty water of the sacred river it may seem like a ridiculous thing. Yet for those who do it is an act of purification, of prayer. The West is tolerant and benevolent towards other religions, but its attitude towards Christians is increasingly hypercritical. The West is not post-Hindu, post-Islam. It is only post-Christian!
The point is that in the West, the supernatural is considered outdated, it is branded as mythology, illusion, instead the West is forever denouncing the difficulties that neither miracles nor pilgrimages can erase.
But in the rest of the world the spiritual.....
(Excerpt) Read more at asianews.it ...
Of course, I will NEVER begrudge planting seeds of faith in muslim lands. God’s Word does NOT return to Him void, and if ONE person is touched, then PRAISE GOD!
It is just so hard when they interpret EVERYTHING (Including signs, wonders, apparitions, even the Words of Our Scripture) in a Totally different and unexpected way than the way it is being presented.
The responses of muslims to even the most simple and logical questions makes civil discourse nearly impossible. A quick trip to any muslim “advice” website reveals unbelievable counsel such as this hypothetical:
“Q: My wife spends so much time with our eight children all day that she is sometimes too tired for sex. What should I do?
A: Oh, You Who Believe! The Answer to this is simple, as outlined by the prophet, peace be upon him. If your wife refuses to do her duty to you, you first admonish her. Then if she is still disobedient, banish her from your bed. If this does not work, you may beat her, but the rod with which you scourge her should not be thicker than your toothbrush. And lastly, you may divorce her, or, if you wish, keep her, and obtain a younger wife to satisfy your needs.”
This “Pastoral Counseling” Scenario is typical of islamic websites. Their take on history, science, family life, ethics, and religion is even weirder. But the tragedy is that ALL of the weirdness is a DISTORTION of the Word of God, and the exact opposite of the Spirit of the Word. One would have better luck bringing the Good News to Borneo Headhunters, because they have no reference to the Bible at all, so there is nothing to “UN-DO”.
Yet the good news is that in places in the global south, the Christian faith is GROWING and growing bgitme.
That.
I have often said, here on FR, that the Catholicism you find in suburbia is not the same Catholicism you find in the rest of the world. The further you get from middle class American Roman Catholicism, the more pagan it becomes. Or perhaps most of American Catholics just disguise the paganism well.
Yes it is.
And let’s not forget the resurgence of the Church in the Former USSR!
God’s Word is more powerful than a two-edged sword.
1 Timothy 2:5 reads, "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,". Where does it say that we need a mediator to pray to Our Mediator, Jesus? Why do we need a mediator to pray to Our Mediator, Jesus?
Please provide me with the Scripture verses that explain where Mary was appointed to rule over half of the Kingdom of God and that salvation comes only through Mary. Unless you can show me scripture to substantiate such claims, I must take them as unscriptural and man-made, yet the Roman church canonized him as a 'Saint' and named him a 'Doctor of the Church'.
Have you now "got that"?
Thank you, Boatbums! I like that gif file! :-)
Logitech and I are in full agreement. He is my husband and a former catholic. He is now simply a Bible-believing Christian.
Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.” The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”
Zechariah was righteous, but he disbelieved God's promise, as communicated by Gabriel, so he was struck mute for a season, until John the Baptist was born. Do you know who else was 'righteous'? King David, a man after God's heart. You know, King David, the adulterer and murder. Job was also righteous, but he suffered more than I could likely take. He suffered because he was proud of his righteousness and adherence to God's laws.
ALL these folks were righteous, yet all sinned. As noted on another posting, Romans 3:23 says, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Mary even confirmed her sinful nature when she said in Luke 1:47 "And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior." Again, IF she is sinless, why would she need a Saviour? If Jesus did not come to save us from the wages of our sins, what did He come to save us from?
--------------- NOT!
A Formerly Proud Canadian says "Satan appearing as an angel of light, healing Muslims so that they worship Mary, a woman, rather than Jesus."
Amazing the ignorance of what the Catholic Church teaches on display here at FR, truly amazing.
You don’t need to leave the county. Try border towns in the Southern half of the US.
The Mission San Xavier del Bac south of Tucson, Arizona. There you can pray to a rotting corpse, laid out in full Papist inspired regalia.
I figure a whole lot of the folks who make such statements know full well they're telling outright lies.
They're dedicated to slandering the Catholic Church, starting arguments that give them an opportunity to spew more lies, and in general make sure there are divisions among Christians. Think about it. Look how the pro-life movement grew when non-Catholic folks joined with the Catholics who have been the backbone of the pro-life movement ever since Roe passed. Don't you think there are people dedicated to doing whatever they can to keep Catholic and non-Catholic Christians from joining together on other things as well?
Of course there are and they work very hard to spread lies and division anywhere they know Christians get together on-line and talk about conservative views. When people agree that abortion is murder, that the lowest level of government that can handle a problem should be the level to handle it, and a host of other things, the fifth columnists have to stick to hot button lies about the Catholic Church if they want to keep their enemies, all conservatives, divided and more easily conquered.
Divide and conquer has kept the democrat fascist party in control of both houses of Congress for all but a few of the past eighty years and they don't want their apple cart upset by a bunch of Christians who look at what they have in common. Catholic individuals have banned together and held the fascists feet to the fire over the evil of abortion and the fascists are tired of it.
The democrat fascists can't move on with the rest of their Eugenics program if there's a chance that Christians, Catholic and non-Catholic, unite and fight them like they've fought over abortion. Subverting a great many people in the hierarchy of Catholic and non-Catholic Churches in this country didn't work. Faithful Christians still joined together and fought abortion even if they couldn't get support from their parish, bishop, pastor, or denomination.
So, the democrat fascists are going after Catholics both with regulations they don't need to get through Congress to try and damage the Church infrastructure, and with their ever faithful propaganda machinery repeating the lies they've been using for over a hundred years to slander individuals. Every little democrat useful idiot knows they can help their fascist party bosses by getting Christians to fight among themselves. As an added bonus, they can enjoy watching some easily led people suck up the lies they tell.
Where better for such liars to spread their lies than on FR where people don't bother to participate unless they're conservative and agree with other Conservatives?
I was going to post something about Saint “Death” and the cultish Catholic Church down in Mexico but thought best not to. Forget I mentioned it. ;O)
Including shrines to Mary in front yards. Especially in small predominantly Catholic towns.Marian Shrines are somehow wrong?
How do YOU explain "righteous" Lot in II Peter 2? Is there a difference in human righteousness vs. God's righteousness? Paul speaks of it in Romans 10:3
For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God.
Scripture clearly states that NONE are righteous - which must mean as righteous as God, since one must be as righteous as God to enter His perfect heaven wherein nothing impure, not even a lie, can be allowed (Rev. 21:27). Lot sinned, Abraham sinned, Zechariah and Elizabeth sinned, even Mary sinned. NO human is without sin - though some are more evil than others. Human righteousness can never be righteous enough - it takes the righteousness of God which He imputes to those who believe on Christ Jesus. That is the essence of the Gospel of grace.
So “all” may not mean the “all” you mean? Hmmmmm.....
I guess it's in the semantics.
You won't, of course, find any of that in Scripture because it was NOT taught or believed by the Apostles or the early church. Such blasphemy developed much later as the Catholic Church drifted further away from Biblical Christianity. What is remarkable to me is that some FRoman Catholics here have no problem whatsoever with the ramblings of a "saint" because whatever he said or practiced has the tacit approval of their church and their church cannot EVER be wrong. Instead, those of us non-Catholic Christians will be deemed anti-catholic bigots for daring to expose or comment negatively about such. In more dire times we would have been judged "heretics" by an Inquisition and probably burned at the stake if we refused to renounce our faith. Thank God for small favors! ;o)
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