Johnny Cash, baptized in the Jordan River.
Posted on 06/21/2018 9:48:25 PM PDT by boatbums
Over the years, I’ve had several Catholic friends and converts ask why I ultimately didn’t convert to their denomination. During my first two years of college, I spent a significant amount of time with Catholics, including at the (then?) US Opus Dei headquarters in NYC. I attended these gatherings with a good friend, who eventually decided to convert from Evangelicalism. I came close to converting, but ultimately decided against it. This has surprised some Catholics. I suspect this is because the standard narrative is that Protestants, especially Evangelicals, are crossing the Tiber in great droves.
Statistically, the narrative isn’t quite so neat: in recent years, Catholicism has lost millions of adherents, most of these converting to a kind of nonreligious spiritualism/secularism or to Protestantism, while millions more Protestants remain Protestant. For every one person who converts to Catholicism, about six leave the church.
Still, the notion that Catholicism is attracting large numbers of Protestant converts, with no movement in the other direction, can create the impression that there is something irresistible about Catholicism to anyone who studies it. My reasons for remaining Protestant haven’t changed a great deal, although they have become more refined, especially since seminary. I would like to share some of them here.
(Excerpt) Read more at medium.com ...
I went to a catholic grade school and catholic high school. No priest or nun ever told us not to read the Bible either. They simply said we needed a priest to interpret it for us. I was so rebellious, I read for myself anyway. Some may have had a problem with that, but there wasn’t much they could do about it. I still read it for myself. 😁🤣
And - did Jesus say anything about it as a Sacrament? And reserved for church? He said “WHENEVER you drink the wine or eat this bread, remember me.” I think that he was telling his disciples to never forget Him, and to never forget the sacrifice that He made for them, so that they could live in grace, and to give them strength in their ministry.
It is really amazing that they all stayed committed to Him, and to His ministry - even to their deaths in often (always?) a terrible manner. Not many leaders can command such devotion.
BTW - speaking of disciples, if God had wanted us to use the metric system, Jesus would have chosen TEN disciples!
I KNOW you haven't been to every non-Catholic Christian church, so your generalization is sadly wrong. Those churches that believe in Jesus Christ and teach the Bible as the Word of God do NOT ignore God's commandments and the "rules" that are universal for ALL believers. All genuine Christians desire to live God honoring lives that bring glory to HIM.
Most Romanists I know HATE Ephesians 2: 8-9.
I fondly remember reading ranting about it being written by a heretic, el oh el.
You are quite right! It's telling how some people need to major on the minors, isn't it?
Follow the Bible?
Then call no man father........
I pray you see the evangelical spirit.
How are all those cocaine fueled homosexual orgies the pedo priests are engaging in at the Vatican working out for you?
How ironic that Catholics take the moral uphogh ground with leadershiplike that?
Rules? Big deal. They don’t mean much when nobody follows them and nobody enforces them.
When the Catholic chrich stops serving communion to pro abortion pro homosexual marriage politicians like Kerry, Pelosi, and Kennedy, then you all would be n a position to point fingers at other’s moral failings.
Predictable as the sunrise.
And here you are, yourself JUDGING the author.
If judgment belongs to God alone, then what are you doing passing judgment on the author?
Did you steal that from Elsie?
Cause that image has “Elsie” written all over it.
Johnny Cash, baptized in the Jordan River.
Have only been to a doctor once (which was just for a physical) Thanks for the sentiment, but prayer needs to be by a Biblically born again believer, and not to created beings in Heaven. As for medical procedures, in the last almost 40 years, thanks and glory be to God. My mom suffered from gall bladder attacks if she did not watch her diet (not chips or ice cream etc.) and lived to about 93, and the body lasted longer than her normal mind.
Gall bladder attacks, with the pain and bloating, are something I first realized in my 20's while working doing truck delivery of milk in the early 80's, which happened if I went without food too long and then ate something substantial, and or somewhat fatty.
Which is what happened here at age 66 (5'5'' and around 135lbs). But by about 9:30 was out the door for most of the day, and played soccer after 7, and did some bike fixes after that and witnessed to the teens who owned them, thanks be to God who gives mercy, grace and strength. May it work to His glory.
So the attacks have never slowed me down much, nor cost me anything, glory be to God for that also. If not for His grace I would have died and went to Hell a long time ago.
Or Roman Catholic?
Why, indeed?
I prefer to be non-demoninational.
No need to subscribe to anyone else's version of Christianity.
I think the author is using the term "Protestant" in this context of his beliefs lining up with those held by the historical early church and then continued in the Evangelical Protestant churches rather than those put forward as necessary for salvation by modern Roman Catholicism. He also rules out all the heretical modern Protestant denominations that have strayed from the ancient rule of faith.
As for "subscribing" to another's version of Christianity, I think it is a good thing to fellowship with those to whom we share the common faith and we are encouraged to do that in Scripture. There are many, many doctrines of the Christian faith that have always been believed everywhere and by all and we can know what these are because they are taught to us plainly in Scripture.
In the Greek of Matthew 26:26, the bread that Jesus gave the disciples was "artos," leavened bread, and not "adzumos," unleavened. This was because the Galileans always held the passover meal on the day before the Jews held their passover, therefore the bread would still be raised bread. It was on the following mid-afternoon that the Jews slaughtered and bled out their lambs, even at the same moment that Jesus, the Lamb of God, was slaughtered and bled out on the Cross.
Furthermore, Jesus came to completely obey every little detail of the law and so fulfill it. One command given in Proverbs 23:30 forbids Him to "look on the wine when it is red," that is, fermented. Concord-type "wine" can be either purple-colored (unfermented non-alcoholic) or it can be red (fermented where the anthocyanins block the passage of the blue part of the spectrum, hence acidified by the production of acetic acid, thus alcoholic, red in color, and no longer sweet). Jesus would not then, or ever, have drunk alcoholic wine (See Proverbs 31:4-5), nor ever created or given it out to the public, as at the Cana wedding. He would not have been glorified (see John 2:11) if He had made drunken people drunker, nor increased the faith of His disciples by it.
It is the little things of the holy writings that prove them true, and distinguish liars that pervert them. It is not at all clear that you understand the meaning of the Remembrance Supper.
It is STILL that way.
But they sure are mouthy when it comes to judging Dear Leader.
Sure there HAS to be a DUMMIES book on:
How to Cook an Albatross.
The way it's written:
Like THIS???
"One indeed is the universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved, in which the priest himself is the sacrifice, Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine; the bread (changed) into His body by the divine power of transubstantiation, and the wine into the blood, so that to accomplish the mystery of unity we ourselves receive from His (nature) what He Himself received from ours."
--Pope Innocent III and Lateran Council IV (A.D. 1215)
I've NOT seen any FR Catholics; who claim Day One as their own; own up to the claimed FACT that the 7 churches in Revelation are CATHOLIC!
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