Apologists Concerned About Rick Warren's Alignment With 'Holy Father'

Have a nice day!

Uh...

Where are the pix of these statues with the folks BOWING in front of them?

>>Ask Elsie if there are any souls in Heaven right now.<<

Which heaven do you refer to?

2 Corinthians 12:3 And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) 4 How that he was caught up into paradise (Paradeison), and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.

The word used for where people go when they die is Paradeison. But ouranois is used for where God is in heaven. They are obviously not the same place. Now, so that we can better understand your question or what you want us to explain would you please tell us which place you are talking about? And while you are at it please show the scripture you use to show that people are in ouranois (heaven) rather than in Paradeison (paradise).

I can find reference where people who have died are in Paradeison but I don't find where they go to ouranois. Until you do that your insistence on some sort of explanation or answer to your question is not possible. If you could clarify that would help a lot.

Are you referring to annalex’s two comments here?

Yes.

I, too, think they are admirable.

50 prayers a day might be ok for the BIBLICAL Anna...

Luke 2:36-37

...but it seems like OCD to me.

There would be parts that he could grasp, but huge swaths which would be far beyond his grasp.

Micah 6:8

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

John 6:28-29
Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?

Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

1 John 3:21-23
Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.
And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.

James 1:27

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah,

When the 'child' gets to the gospel of John; it'll be a bit easier to understand...

Well, why not discuss something else since the subject has to be changed to avoid having Protestants ask you any questions.

So; continue the fight then; Bob; but Hussein's statue has tumbled into the square.

The lock-step anti-Catholicism among FR Protestants must be maintained after all.

Don't you have a pope to bitch about?

I prayed earnestly to the Holy Spirit for guidance, and the Holy Spirit directed me to the Church.

I will ask again -- was that not yourself which testified on these pages previously of having received baptism of the Spirit in a Pentecostal Church?

While you had also shared that you were raised in the Roman Catholic Church...but for a time had not attended, etc?

And then here you say ---

"the Church"?

Since when was the Roman Catholic church ever exclusively "the" church? It most certainly was not in the earliest beginnings. Ah, but then in later centuries took up the trappings of Empire of Rome as that disintegrated and dissolved, blending that with "Church".

The idea itself the the Roman Catholic Church (which Catholic insist should be called only The Catholic Church) is indeed The Church, either in entirety, or as central authority is a Romish fantasy (and always has been!)...possibly reinforced here and there by mistaking correlation (of Spirit) for causation (themselves!)-- when the cause is God's own grace & mercy -- which can be found in full abundance far outside the narrow confines of Roman Catholicism.

One need not accept popery in order to enjoy communion, through Christ, with God. BUT -- that concept is among many that Roman Catholics (including popes) have long asserted is a requirement, even one which Christ Himself would require of all human beings (if one listens closely enough to Romanists).

Being that it that exclusivity if so far from the truth --- that aspect is in the least -- error, a mistake -- if not being an outright lie from the pit of hell itself.

And you just got through here on these pages with showing statues of early Reformers (and John Wesley, who was a leader -- but one whom few consider to have been entirely without flaw) in comparison to making graven images & statues representative of (now) spiritual entities considered to be now in Heaven -- that one can and even should direct prayers towards?

All the excuses, all the rationalizations --- they are not enough to change the reality of having incrementally populated the Heavens with lesser ranked gods and goddesses --- regardless of all the studious avoidance of using those terms of description for departed saints, in end result having renewed pagan religious thought and practice that there be a pantheon of individual spirits which one can (and should) direct their prayers towards -- other than the One True God -- the God of the Hebrews, the one God whom should be rightfully feared (even) since that is the ONE God who actually does things.

I cannot describe His Holiness, but it is frightening -- or can be -- as the Scriptures attest Moses experienced.

God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Though He is utterly Holy, complete and entire, there being no variableness or shadow of turning within Himself, nothing within Him which is contradictory, yet still, He does have his own emotion as it were --- knowing happiness, joy, good pleasure & contentedness, He also can be angered and knows sadness (oh, boy -- does He ever know sadness).

He has allowed myself to hear as it were some of those emotions, those kind of "feelings" which were within Him in conjunction with a some (but not all) things which He shared portion of His own thought with -- little me -- who is not much, just one individual human being among billions.

You talk about "Mary" directing you towards Jesus? Really.

How does that happen?

Can you break it down for us?Can you describe how that communication transpires?

Is it more like remembering what NT texts say about her, and what various individuals within the RCC say and "teach" about Mary, producing within trains of thought and then also --- emotion?

Or is there some "spirit" which you identify as being "Mary" herself?

I'm not sure why the Helper which Christ described in John 16 would require additional assistance.

So go ahead, get mad, tell me what's what with the usual excuses, I do believe I have heard them all, and remain still far from convinced of the veracity of much of the usual RC apologetic -- but not for reason that I do not understand it.

Or -- as is more typical -- just shine me on, avoid questions which may be inconvenient, ignore what I'm really saying here -- yet if answering at all, answer just for some smallish part -- some aspect which can be like a stray strand of thread to be pulled on, diverting attention to some seam imagined to be weakpoint.

I expect nothing else.

The Truth. Ha. He's like a lonely vagabond -- homeless, wandering, searching with His lamp high and low -- and most people when they stumble over him, just pick themselves up like nothing just happened.

The point was that children will understand parts of the Bible, but huge swathes of it they will not understand.

Dang!

Just like Adults! (Vlad excluded of course; he know's it ALL!)

I prayed earnestly to the Holy Spirit for guidance, and the Holy Spirit directed me to the Church.

Keep listenin'!

"What is interesting about the statues you posted is that unlike catholics I don’t see people bowing to them nor praying to them to intercede."

TRUE--- and that IS interesting. The spiritual heirs of Luther, Calvin, Waldo and Wycliffe abandoned the Biblical customs and practices of bowing before kinsmen; priests, prophets, kings; holy places (like Jerusalem) and holy objects (like the Ark of the Covenant) #65 ---( worth a look). Some have strayed so far that they can't even distinguish between bowing and adoration anymore. The abandonment of the Biblical language of gesture is an immense cultural loss.

Incidentally, we don't pray "to" pictures to intercede. That would be silly silly: art objects don't intercede. We believe the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much; and of course, it doesn't stop availing much if that righteous person has passed into the life to come, where they are with the Triune God forever.

"God did say that making these idols/images would draw people to worship before them.....which was what the pagans did."

TRUE--- and the making of idols will do just that, because that is what idols are intended for. But that's not what statues, bas-reliefs, icons, painting, stained glass, tapestries, banners, frescoes, mosaics and murals are for That's why these are not forbidden; specifically, idols are forbidden.

"Additionally, regardless of what denomination these statues are affiliated with..I’ve never known any of them to urge praying or requesting it’s membership to ask prayer of these departed people to pray for them."

TRUE, natch. But I put those pictures there for confirm the fact that it's not the making of statues/images that is forbidden. It's not even the honor given to the great men of the Reformation that is forbidden. What's forbidden is: idols.

We believe the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much; and of course, it doesn't stop availing much if that righteous person has passed into the life to come, where they are with the Triune God forever.

Hold this thought.

Revelation 20:11-12

Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.

Never heard of anyone burying a statue of Wycliffe upside down in their yard, either.

And apparently you have to be careful not to inadvertently put it in your neighbor''s yard, because, well, ol' St. Joe might help them instead of you:

http://saint-josephstatue.com/Where_to_bury_a_St_Joseph_statue.html

Now Mrs. D, I know this evidence will be dismissed as superstition not officially sanctioned by Rome. But this is how many in the Catholic community, outside the bubble of FR, relate to these things, and there is a material difference between that and the typical Protestant use of statuary. It's the sacramentalism at work. Protestants are generally less inclined to assign neoplatonic sympathetic relationships between material objects and their supposed archetypes. But the divergence of Rome from generic Christianity happened in part, IMHO, because the Greek apologists ingested too much Plato. It's one of the main reasons why the sacraments came to be seen as efficacious conveyances of grace. In Greek theurgy, there is a bond between the representation and the reality, a bond that goes beyond mere representation and enters the realm of forming mystic bridges to the divine.

This is alien to Biblical theology. This mode of thinking antedates the Greeks, though they refined it to a sharp point, and might even be part of why God early on forbade the use of statuary in connection with deity as a general principle. People just naturally have a hard time avoiding superstition and magical thinking. It's part of being born sinners. Even after their dramatic rescue from Egypt, the children of Israel made themselves a golden calf, though they tried to steer clear of trouble by associating it with worship of the true God, Who was appearing to them only indirectly in the mountain. They were trying to build their own bridge to God. But God did not approve.

Exodus 32:4-5 And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. (5) And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the LORD.

So we see that dressing something up a violation of God's commands as being done "to the Lord," does not sanctify it. If anything, it makes it worse. The command had been given. They had to know it was wrong. Did they really think God would wink at it if they tried to pass off their "golden bull" as a representation of the true God?

Similarly, Nadab and Abihu were not specifically forbidden to offer incense before the Lord, but in doing so they violated this positive assertion of how that worship was to be conducted:

Leviticus 9:7 And Moses said unto Aaron, Go unto the altar, and offer thy sin offering, and thy burnt offering, and make an atonement for thyself, and for the people: and offer the offering of the people, and make an atonement for them; as the LORD commanded.

Note the only one given a command to approach the altar was Aaron. Yet in chapter ten, when his sons take it on themselves to offer incense on their own "creative" impulse? Boom. Not approved. Death penalty.

So while we as believers have considerable liberty on things that do not pertain directly to the worship of God, it appears God is quite insistent that we worship Him in the manner he prescribes for us. When we build our own "creative" bridges to God, without His explicit permission, there is a risk of that bridge becoming a substitute for the real thing, despite our best intentions. It seems so much simpler and safer to me to just avoid that risk and draw within the lines He has provided us for divine worship.

Peace,

SR

I don’t think people do. I sure don’t!

You stated........"we don't pray "to" pictures to intercede...that would be silly,silly"...

..."You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God"....Ex. 20:5

...."Thou shalt not BOW DOWN down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images."....Ex.23:24

50 prayers would be just one Rosary. You can do that in 20 minutes. Doesn’t seem like OCD to me.

Amen to all that!

I think so, too.

“nor bow down to them” - God

....”Dressing something up a violation of God’s commands as being done “to the Lord,” does not sanctify it.... If anything, it makes it worse. The command had been given.”.......