Posted on 08/24/2015 11:58:39 AM PDT by damonw
Christ started a very visible Church and that Church is the Catholic Church. Without the Catholic Church you would have no idea who Jesus Christ is. For the Catholic Church gave the world the Bible, which is the story of Christ. End of story.
The Holy Spirit through Paul announced one Body of Christ. Jesus did not die on the cross to form a religious denomination. Israel will always be His called out people on Earth. In this dispensation, He is calling out a new Spiritual Body, who are neither Jews or Gentiles (that separation is gone along with any other religious division invented by man or inspired by the enemy). His Body is formed by people made alive in Christ, Blessed with all Spiritual Blessings, and seated in Heavenly places in Christ. (Ephesians 1 & 2) They are complete in Christ. (Colossians 1) Their affection is on things above, not on things on the Earth. Their life is hid with Christ in God. And when Christ appears, then they shall also appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3)
How do we know this? Because God’s Word is Truth. We are sanctified, or set apart by His Word. The Comforter dwells in Believers to guide them. Believers abide in Jesus, the True Vine and Living Word. You CANNOT bear fruit without a vital connection to Jesus. How is this done? By having His Words living in you. It is the written or preached Word that reveals the Living Word. It is the Holy Spirit who confirms and reveals the Truth in the Believer’s spirit. (John 14 - 17)
There is NOTHING in the letters written to the Body of Christ to suggest the need for religious denominations. But there are plenty of warnings against yielding to traditions, philosophy, the reasoning of men, and religious bondage. (Galatians, Colossians 2 - 3) We are called to spiritual unity, a oneness in Spirit and Truth (God’s Word), as illustrated by Jesus and the Father. (John 14, Ephesians 4, Colossians 3)
I have visited many churches of all different flavors. If the Word is being taught, especially under the Anointing, I am edified. And even if that is not the case, God will find a way to quench the thirst of a sincere Believer. (Isaiah 44:3) However, if a church is not teaching the Word, preaching a social gospel, fear, doubt, or unbelief, or if they are replacing God’s Truth with the traditions of men, I would quickly seek out a new home. Faith comes from hearing God’s Word, not religious ceremonies, anecdotes, or philosophy. (Romans 10)
Time is running out. Religious divisions created by man are meaningless. Are you a child of God, made alive in Christ, or a child of darkness and spiritually dead? That is what ultimately matters.
Then you have a very incompetent God. One who cannot reveal Himself to people by Himself.
God gave the world His Scripture through the Jews.
The Catholic church had nothing to do with it and it can all be verified historically.
We can learn all we need to know to recognize Jesus from the OT which cannot be claimed to have been written by the RCC.
Men taking credit for the works of God is not going to end well for those who do so. He will share His glory with no other.
And that’s just the Baptists.....but we will unite behind Jesus when the time comes.
The Jews didn’t have one thing to do with NT, other than the first apostles were Christian Jews, passing on to others, BY WORD OF MOUTH, what they had heard about Christ. They were followers of Christ the minute they became his apostles and were CHRISTIANS, no longer abiding by any Jewish faith. The NT, compiled and canonized by the CATHOLIC CHURCH, comprising of the 4 GOSPELS, came from THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. The CATHOLIC CHURCH came before the Gospels, not the other way around. You really need a refresher course in Christianity 100. The CATHOLIC CHURCH determined what was divinely inspired in the OLD TESTAMENT. The history of Christianity and the history of Catholicism is one in the same. The Bible that you read, if it has 27 books, was compiled and canonized BY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. If your Bible contains those 27 books you have accepted the authority of THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, because without the Church those 27 books would not be there. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, being guided by the Holy Spirit, determined what is contained in your Bible. FACTS, and I could care less how much your deny history.
I’m not terribly expert at all on SBC laws etc. I know they don’t legally have any control over the congregation, unlike small-e episcopal churches like Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, etc. That means I suppose the most they could do is deny them membership to the convention, and the church become non-denomination, independent or join some other Baptist convention.
What you describe is slightly simplistic, although the truth us even more antithetical to Protestant ecclesiology.
The truth is that the Christian Church always centered around the mass. At first, the mass was a great communal feast, but even in the times of St. Paul and the disciples, they saw that eating to satisfy hunger and appeal to taste was distracting from the central purpose, so they told everyone to go, eat first, then come to simply break bread and share wine.
These proto-masses consisted of reading from the scripture, a priest (Latin: President; Gr: Presbyter) teaching the faith as revealed from that scripture, and then offering the body and blood of Christ as Jesus commanded them to do.
Initially, the readings at these proto-masses consisted of the Hebrew writings which had been translated into Greek, the lingua franca of the entire Roman Empire, including Palestine. This allowed gentiles and Jews to share a common language. Eventually, letters from the Apostles were added to bridge between the Old Testament writings and the Christian teachings. The gospels were soon elevated to a special place, not in the 3rd century as seems to have become legend, but within the lifetimes of the apostles who wrote them.
The "Bible" became the collection of readings which were suitable for the Catholic mass. The notion that some were suitable for moral instruction and others were not is rubbish; the entire purpose of including them in the mass was for moral instruction.
Any book which was found to lack apostolic authority was excluded from the New Testament. Old Testament readings were used solely for the purpose of shedding light on New Testament readings, so the fact that books like 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, etc., made their way into the mass -- and the Catholic bible -- demonstrates that the Fathers interpreted them in ways which foreshadowed the gospel. (Some other OT books were scarcely used during the mass, but were included out of historical connection to the Septuagint, the Greek collection of Hebrew scriptures.)
So it's not just that the Catholic Church took it upon herself to declare what the bible was. It's that the bible was developed as an instrument for the Catholic Holy Mass, the means by which Christians demonstrated to Gentiles and Jews that the Holy Mass is the fulfillment of biblical prophesy and the commands of Jesus.
Metmom Catholics would never use the term "idolatry" to describe the Protestant relationship to the bible, because Catholics believe that the bible contains the living breath of God. To immerse oneself in it is to come into contact with God. We teach that we encounter God and his graces in three ways: in the Community, in the Sacraments and in the Word of God. All of these are components of the Church. But the relationship many Protestants have to the bible strikes Catholics as alien to what the bible is. Reading the bible is like reading letters from your Mom in a way: The very act of reading them returns your mind to the author, and fills you with love for the author. But to expect that you can have a relationship with the letters, but not visit Mom?
How do you love your Mom? You listen to her. You value what she tells you. You talk to her. You share your hardships. You follow what she has taught you. When you can, you visit her in person. You hug her. You think about her. Ideally, that's how Catholics love the Church, which is the body of Christ. We don't just read the letters from the Church. But because our local parish isn't ideal, we also turn to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the embodiment of the Church. (Yes, Revelations 12 is about the Church AND it's about Mary.)
“What you describe is slightly simplistic, although the truth is even more antihetical to Protestant ecclesiology”.
Thanks for your reply and I agree with you 100%. It just boggles my mind when Christian/Catholic history is completely ignored and the Catholic Church’s role in that history is minimized. No one can be can be that naive.
About as interesting, these days, as the Charismatic Catholics relegated to a small chapel on church grounds like they have some sort of plague.
But the truth of both cases IMO is different worship practices. Charismatics worship the way they do because they want to speak in tongues and worship like Black Baptists with song. The Black Baptists are more passionate in their expressions of public faith. Just the way it is. I find it interesting the NT church consisted of all the pieces and parts and not relegated to respective 'ghettos.' Perhaps we should learn from the NT church.
Nope pretty much completely different. One was based on race the other on style.
Having attended a Black Baptist church for a few weeks, I would say there's a lot to do with style as well:)
Apparently, blacks and whites in the same church is not so segregated here in Texas. Yankee land always had issues with it from what I remember living up there.
Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
And the word renews our minds and washes them clean.
Ephesians 5:25-27 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
And we have the mind of Christ and where do we find His thoughts?
Scripture.
And all that said, without the Holy Spirit to give live and make the word come alive to us, those words will not be effective in the life of the believer.
Mary is physically no more accessible to us than Jesus is because neither of them have a physical body here on earth.
However, Jesus is more accessible as He lives in the heart of the believer, something Mary can't do.
Why the need for Mary when we have Jesus who is our Mediator and intercedes for us according to the will of God? Is He who died for us not enough for what we need in our spiritual life?
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