Posted on 05/09/2015 7:44:31 AM PDT by RnMomof7
Millions of sincere Catholics wear the brown scapular thinking by doing so it will help them spiritually. They believed the report that Mary made and is backing a salvation promise in connection with the brown scapular hundreds of years ago based on their religious traditions. Over the years wearing the brown scapular has been perpetuated by sincere Catholic leaders, such as the one in this video, but it is in complete futility that it is worn. It is a false hope and a spiritual snare. 
It is not based on God’s truth and is, therefore, just as deadly for the sincere Catholic as it is for the Hindu who bathes in the Ganges River thinking his sins will be washed away in the water or for the Muslim who kisses the black stone of Kaaba to be forgiven! [The picture to the right is Mel Gibson, the director of the Passion of Christ, wearing a brown scapular as he smokes.]
I too once wore the brown scapular as an Ex Roman Catholic. I know what it is like to be taught something and accept it as truth to find out later it is not only unscriptural, but anti-scriptural. It hurts, but TRUTH is what we must stand on to be safe. It takes humility in such cases to turn.
NOTE: At about 2:23 time-wise into the video, the speaker is quoted below. How could anyone deny that Mary is deified in Catholicism? Surely, this rampant idolatry is grieving to the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father. This is what Catholicism teaches about the brown scapular:
And so, wearing of the brown scapular reminds us, should remind us, of three things. First, that we are children of Mary. Second of all, that we need to work for our Lady. And finally, it should be a garment of humility and penance. First, by the brown scapular we profess ourselves to be children of Mary. The scapular of our Lady is a badge or a uniform so to speak by which we profess to whom we belong and who we serve. Likewise, our Lady in turn by wearing the brown scapular, she recognizes us as her children, as her special children. And because of that, she consequently protects us and watches over us. The brown scapular should also remind us that we need to work for our Lady because the scapular, which means shoulder garment, was originally that, it was a garment worn by religious in order to protect their habit, their religious habit that they wore on a daily basis during those periods of work to keep it from getting dirty, stained, from ripping, etc. and so therefore the scapular is a working garb. And so this should remind us that there’s no room for lazy piety. If we wear the brown scapular and we consider ourselves our Lady’s children, there’s no place for lazy piety but rather we should fill our lives with good works. This brown scapular should remind us the need to faithfully fulfill our daily duties, and to make another adaptation of Scripture, to labor as good soldiers of the Immaculate. Finally, the third place, the brown scapular is also a garment of humility and of penance. So in a spirit of penance, we should accept all the difficulties of our state of life and all the sufferings that our Lady may want to send us. And the scapular will give us the strength to do this. In all of our difficulties, we can always grab onto our brown scapular, remind ourselves of our Lady’s protection, her watchfulness, her presence and especially at the moment of death, when we can call to mind our Lady’s promise of salvation. Our Lady of Mount Carmel, pray for us.
* Not a single word about Jesus was mentioned there.
* The brown scapular is 100% religious mythology and idolatry, as Mary is deified as a type of Savior.
* No Bible light shines from such brown scapular Catholic tradition.
"When properly invoked, with Jupiter being very powerful and ruling in the heavens, these intelligences - by the power of ancient magic - guaranteed to the possessor of this talisman the gain of riches, and favors, and power, and love, and peace; and to confirm honors, and dignities, and councils. Talismatic magic further declared that any one who worked skillfully with this Jupiter Table would obtain the power of stimulating anyone to offer his love to the possessor of the talisman, whether from a friend, brother, relative, or even any female."
"And in some very real and quite mysterious sense, this particular Table of Jupiter was the most appropriate talisman for Joseph Smith to possess."
Every one, 'sept the original, is a translation of a translation.
Not a single scholar used the Face in a Hat method for Danish, or French or...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Book_of_Mormon_translations
Well, I had to notice, of course, that you didn’t confirm belief in Jesus’ virgin birth, His miracles, His death to pay for our sins, and His resurrection, and you actually didn’t address them in your reply. So who do you believe Jesus to be?
Someone’s honest answers on those points in the first paragraph determine their view of Biblical inerrancy.
So then, the Book of Mormon is the often-REVISED and improved Word of the Mormon god.
Sounds very iffy, tenuous, and very susceptible to manipulation (of a dull people) by considerably-less-than-geniuses.
Will stick to any decent English translation of the Holy Bible not issued by a cult.
“I am not so conceited as to believe, or so full of hubris to claim, that I know it all, with certainty (and thereby pass certain judgement on other humans, such as those who practice with a brown scapula).”
But do you truly and fully understand the concerns of those of us troubled by the brown scapula? How can you be so sure that our concerns aren’t fully merited? And it is not the case that we’re passing judgment on those who wear a brown scapula, but by suggesting people concerned about the brown scapula practice are motivated by hubris, aren’t you judging us, and since Scripture isn’t your ultimate authority, on what objective basis? It sounds like your own wisdom is what you trust in. Is that the case?
“I highlight some flaws of that approach, by specifying significant moral conflicts, which a literal reading can not resolve (slavery, etc.).”
What has often gotten left out, as it goes without saying, is that the literal reading of the Bible must be done by faith. In that case, the reader trusts that he himself is a sinner who doesn’t know but the smallest bit of what God does, and that as a sinner, he is not the least bit qualified to judge or doubt God’s goodness. If something God says or does seems evil to us, it is something we for one reason or other don’t understand. If we honestly look at the Bible through the eyes of faith, we see that God is perfect in every way, including in love, goodness, wisdom, justice and mercy. I already know from experience that some things that did seem evil or possibly evil to me in my natural understanding, but that I accepted on faith as not being evidence of God being evil, I later found I just had not understood or known some aspect about them that made all the difference.
“Do you mean to imply that the Old Testament has been removed from scripture by the New Covenant? Totally overwritten? Or only some things in the Old Testament? If only some, how can you determine which? Literal reading does not cover each point.”
The New Testament, like the Old, is God’s Word. Throughout the New, He instructs us on how to consider the Old, and He does so sufficiently. Ever hear that the Old Testament is the New Testament concealed, and the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed? And not everything in the Old Testament has to be specifically addressed, either.
” If you leave it to the Holy Spirit (as subjectively experienced by individuals) to make all judgements, you are no longer using a literal fundamentalist approach at all.”
A great many Christians, going by experience, would not agree.
“A major problem with either approach, is that it leaves no check on extremism. If the text says to kill, a fundamentalist must OBEY. If the Spirit reveals that everyone should drink the Kool Aid, then the individual would have no moral authority to do otherwise. Reverend Jim Jones claimed guidance from the Holy Spirit when he had hundreds killed, and instructed parents to poison their children.”
Do you distinguish fundamentalist Christians from other fundamentalists? And again, it comes back to those fundamental beliefs about Jesus and who He is, and about ourselves as sinners. If we’re praying the Lord’s prayer, including truly asking that His will be done, and asking Him for wisdom when we need it (as James tells us to), and taking the counsel the Lord offers us in our lives (messages of correction that will guide or convict our born-again spirits), then we just aren’t going to go off in some radical way that is evil opposition to God’s true will. I haven’t studied Jim Jones in great depth, but I know he was pretending to be Christian, and according to a PBS show about him I saw years ago, at a certain point during a church service he threw down his Bible and told the congregation that they were to listen to him, not the Bible. If I recall correctly, some if not many people left at that point. The people who stayed did so knowing that he had put himself over God’s Word. And I’m sure that an in-depth study of his “church” would show all sorts of tell-tale signs that there was nothing in the least Biblical about it.
“There are many things prescribed in the Old Testament, which are not specifically addressed in the New. Therefore, a literal, fundamentalist reading cannot but OBEY whatever heinous and barbaric practices were codified a few thousand years ago in the Old Testament, unless they are literally and explicitly revoked.”
Again, the “therefore” conclusion doesn’t follow. Taking the Bible literally and fundamentally doesn’t mean reading only the commands, ignoring everything else, and just following the commands (or just the commands that might be useful to justify some sin, as you suggest). Only when the Bible is read with faith, as a response to the Gospel,
Your descriptions here and elsewhere mischaracterize and misunderstand Scripture, and how it’s to be read and understood.
” I gave some examples of explicit rules for conducting slavery, and for punishing rape by forcing the rapist to marry the victim. You apparently cannot or will not address these specific concrete points. Slavery is God’s will - yes or no? Rape permissible after military conquest? Torture? Genocide?”
As I said in another post to you, there are a great many resources online that address these very points. Since you know that it is far, far easier for you to name the so-called problems than it is for anyone to get together answers to them, and very time-consuming if done with a lot of care, then you should have acknowledged your awareness that evangelicals do have answers to those questions. I’m not going to exhaustively answer them. Given that it’s you bringing these things up, you could take the time yourself to find evangelical answers on them, and to voice your objections to them, showing why you believe they’re inadequate. Or if that’s too time-consuming for you, then post someone’s writing that you agree with.
A short reply, then, is that the New Covenant is called a better covenant, and Jesus said Moses granted divorce for the hardness of men’s hearts. In other words, God, in His mercy, will temporarily tolerate, in certain circumstances, what is far from morally perfect and His will. He does that not because He loves sin, but sinners. And out of love, He tolerates all of us and this world, for no matter how “good” we become, while here we are still not sinless.
With certain things, then, we have to look at the time and circumstances, and look at things through all of Scripture, by faith. What you say about Biblical fundamentalism versus Catholicism and in comparison to Islam are straw men arguments, to be brief. We don’t interpret things as you describe, and the Bible is the True God’s Word, not the words of sinful man that are credited to an idol.
ping.
This is meant for you.
In regards to Jim Jones, as I said, he openly opposed the Bible:
The young preacher once threw his Bible to the floor and yelled at his associates, “Too many people are looking at this instead of looking at me!”
Time Magazine, December 4, 1978, Messiah from the Midwest
en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jim_Jones
The Letter Killeth, by Jim Jones
Of the thousands of documents which members of Peoples Temple left behind following their mass deaths on 18 November 1978, there are very few which Jim Jones apparently wrote himself. One of these few is “The Letter Killeth,” an undated, 24-page booklet which Jones prepared to denigrate the Bible’s legitimacy through its errors and inconsistencies, its defense of slavery, and its depictions of rapes and murders which were condoned or ordered by God. In seeming contradiction, the booklet also provides the Biblical basis for the Peoples Temple ministry as well as defends Jones’ position as an anointed prophet of the Word. However, this takes up only a small portion of the text and was not as important to Jones’ message about the Bible.
Certainly, when Jones referred to the booklet, as he did innumerable times, it was in the context of his attacks on what he called “your black book.” Moreover, even when he did not refer to “The Letter Killeth” by name, he used the examples of Biblical error and illegitimacy which he collected for the booklet throughout his speeches and sermons...
jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=14111
Occasionally in his sermons, Jones would spit on the “yellow pages of King James,” throw the Bible on the floor, jump up and down on it, and declare that the letter kills.
Salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown
By David Chidester
p. 64 (accessed through Google Books)
That book also reports that Jones taught that King James actually wrote the King James Bible himself (it wasn’t a translation of ancient texts, but James’ own creation), and he wrote it to subjugate people.
Where there is fault and sin, it’s not the Bible’s fault or sin, but man’s, and to do sin, people need to discard what the Bible says.
Then came the daughters of Zelophehad, the son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh, of the families of Manasseh the son of Joseph: and these are the names of his daughters; Mahlah, Noah, and Hoglah, and Milcah, and Tirzah. And they stood before Moses, and before Eleazar the priest, and before the princes and all the congregation, by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying, Our father died in the wilderness, and he was not in the company of them that gathered themselves together against the LORD in the company of Korah; but died in his own sin, and had no sons. Why should the name of our father be done away from among his family, because he hath no son? Give unto us therefore a possession among the brethren of our father. And Moses brought their cause before the LORD. And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, The daughters of Zelophehad speak right: thou shalt surely give them a possession of an inheritance among their father's brethren; and thou shalt cause the inheritance of their father to pass unto them. And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a man die, and have no son, then ye shall cause his inheritance to pass unto his daughter. And if he have no daughter, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his brethren. And if he have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his father's brethren. And if his father have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his kinsman that is next to him of his family, and he shall possess it: and it shall be unto the children of Israel a statute of judgment, as the LORD commanded Moses.And
(Numbers 27:1-11)
And the chief fathers of the families of the children of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh, of the families of the sons of Joseph, came near, and spake before Moses, and before the princes, the chief fathers of the children of Israel: And they said, The LORD commanded my lord to give the land for an inheritance by lot to the children of Israel: and my lord was commanded by the LORD to give the inheritance of Zelophehad our brother unto his daughters. And if they be married to any of the sons of the other tribes of the children of Israel, then shall their inheritance be taken from the inheritance of our fathers, and shall be put to the inheritance of the tribe whereunto they are received: so shall it be taken from the lot of our inheritance. And when the jubile of the children of Israel shall be, then shall their inheritance be put unto the inheritance of the tribe whereunto they are received: so shall their inheritance be taken away from the inheritance of the tribe of our fathers. And Moses commanded the children of Israel according to the word of the LORD, saying, The tribe of the sons of Joseph hath said well. This is the thing which the LORD doth command concerning the daughters of Zelophehad, saying, Let them marry to whom they think best; only to the family of the tribe of their father shall they marry. So shall not the inheritance of the children of Israel remove from tribe to tribe: for every one of the children of Israel shall keep himself to the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers. And every daughter, that possesseth an inheritance in any tribe of the children of Israel, shall be wife unto one of the family of the tribe of her father, that the children of Israel may enjoy every man the inheritance of his fathers. Neither shall the inheritance remove from one tribe to another tribe; but every one of the tribes of the children of Israel shall keep himself to his own inheritance. Even as the LORD commanded Moses, so did the daughters of Zelophehad: For Mahlah, Tirzah, and Hoglah, and Milcah, and Noah, the daughters of Zelophehad, were married unto their father's brothers' sons: And they were married into the families of the sons of Manasseh the son of Joseph, and their inheritance remained in the tribe of the family of their father.I invite you (and any lurkers) to review these passages and note how tracing the line within the familial tribe was a key part of the legislation. That familial tribalism is preserved in the name of the tribal father. Granted, it was not quite like our highly rigid first name/last name arrangement in modern English culture, but from a legal perspective it had the same effect, and could even be rightly understood as a bundle of rights that inhere in the tribal father's name.
(Numbers 36:1-12)
The LORD hath sworn in truth unto David; he will not turn from it; Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne. If thy children will keep my covenant and my testimony that I shall teach them, their children shall also sit upon thy throne for evermore.As to the conditionality of the covenant to David, we know from prophecy that the Messiah would indeed be from the Davidic line:
(Psalms 132:11-12)
And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:However, there was a problem, and at first it would seem impossible to solve. Jechonias was a king in the line of David, but was so displeasing to the Lord it was prophesied no son of his would ever sit on the throne of David, which the Messiah must surely do:
(Isaiah 11:1)
Thus saith the LORD, Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah.So was this a mistake? Did God make a promise, only to become unable to fulfill it because of the sins of one man? God forbid!
(Jeremiah 22:30)
Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.BTW, as for representation, I hear there's a really good advocate whom you might trust more than me. Actually, He is already my Advocate. He never loses a case, so He's way better than me, and I'm happy to recommend Him.
(1 Corinthians 3:18-20)
For your consideration, I point out two things. First, it’s proper here to ping someone when something they wrote is discussed. Mlizzy quoted you and pinged you, and I commented on what you wrote and also pinged you.
Then, second, I don’t see it as equity that you respond to my ping with arguments, but in essence tell me that a reply to you isn’t welcome. If someone replies with arguments to someone else, instead of just ignoring a ping or saying they don’t want to discuss the matter, then they should be open to responses to their arguments.
I’m also pinging the RM here to look at our discussion as this happened to me at least a couple times before, and at least one person considered it an offense that I wrote to them again. And this is something that goes on here. I’ve seen the same thing done to others.
That was the first thing I thought about when I read that too ..
Ahhhh so much "doctrine" is written by silence ...think of the assumption ..and the lost tribes of Israel ....
The fact is using his logic we can not know if his "non prophets " actually did talk to God first and not record it..
In regards to Jim Jones, as I said, he openly opposed the Bible:
The young preacher once threw his Bible to the floor and yelled at his associates, “Too many people are looking at this instead of looking at me!”
Time Magazine, December 4, 1978, Messiah from the Midwest
en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jim_Jones
The Letter Killeth, by Jim Jones
Of the thousands of documents which members of Peoples Temple left behind following their mass deaths on 18 November 1978, there are very few which Jim Jones apparently wrote himself. One of these few is “The Letter Killeth,” an undated, 24-page booklet which Jones prepared to denigrate the Bible’s legitimacy through its errors and inconsistencies, its defense of slavery, and its depictions of rapes and murders which were condoned or ordered by God. In seeming contradiction, the booklet also provides the Biblical basis for the Peoples Temple ministry as well as defends Jones’ position as an anointed prophet of the Word. However, this takes up only a small portion of the text and was not as important to Jones’ message about the Bible.
Certainly, when Jones referred to the booklet, as he did innumerable times, it was in the context of his attacks on what he called “your black book.” Moreover, even when he did not refer to “The Letter Killeth” by name, he used the examples of Biblical error and illegitimacy which he collected for the booklet throughout his speeches and sermons...
jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=14111
Occasionally in his sermons, Jones would spit on the “yellow pages of King James,” throw the Bible on the floor, jump up and down on it, and declare that the letter kills.
Salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown
By David Chidester
p. 64 (accessed through Google Books)
That book also reports that Jones taught that King James actually wrote the King James Bible himself (it wasn’t a translation of ancient texts, but James’ own creation), and he wrote it to subjugate people.
Where there is fault and sin, it’s not the Bible’s fault or sin, but man’s, and to do sin, people need to discard what the Bible says.
I have never heard of them. Thank you for the explanation.
Mormons, Muslims, and Hebrew Roots come to mind.
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