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Locked on 04/24/2022 5:40:39 AM PDT by Religion Moderator, reason:
Childishness |
Posted on 03/06/2022 11:16:06 AM PST by CharlesOConnell
A man commits a serious crime, then he gets released. He has "paid his debt to society". But wait a minute, he's only ready for the half-way house. He's unlikely to get a prestigious job in his new prison suit coat, or any job at all; he has civil impediments, he can't vote or hold certain offices. His crime was serious enough that he won't be presumed to have been completely rehabilitated until he performs a notable service to society, or at least spends many years on the straight and narrow, so that his crime can be truly overlooked or forgotten.
In Catholic faith, your "debt to society" is paid by Jesus Christ on Calvary. It's called "eternal punishment", without Christ it keeps you from going to heaven. Supposing that you do take advantage of His sacrifice, you're truly sorry, have a firm purpose of amendment, if you relapse, you go again for forgiveness (to the Sacrament of Confession).
But your sin leaves a strong trace at another layer of impurity called "temporal punishment due to sin", like the civil impediments facing the half-way house prisoner. Because "nothing impure can enter heaven", there is a place or a state, a condition of purification to render you fit for heaven after Christ has finally saved you from hell. The Catholic Church calls it purgatory.
(Where is it in the bible? Where is the word Trinity in the bible? Where does it say that you only need a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? Many valid principles aren't stated explicitly in the bible, but it does say to "hold fast to the traditions you have learned, whether by word or by letter", because much of the Gospel wasn't written down, as Jesus only wrote in the sand, the majority of the Gospel was taught from word to ear to people who couldn't afford expensive books, the exceptions were what tended to get written down. But the implication that there is a purgatory, is contained in the bible--see the comments.)
The ex-con can receive a pardon or commutation of his probation from a Governor, if he performs some heroic deed, saving numerous lives, or, like Chuck Colson, performs a long-lasting, valuable community service helping numerous people who can't help themselves.
In the Catholic Church there are 2 ways for the residual, temporal effects due to sin to be expiated: suffering in this life, or after life, undergoing purifying suffering along with other people who will finally be saved, but have to suffer for long without the vision of God--that is what causes them their pain.
Their suffering isn't meritorious enough to grant their release, the saints in heaven and those on earth suffering and practicing virtue can pray for the suffering souls in purgatory. In no way is their release by slow transfer of suffering or practice of virtue, "buying heaven". It's a long, excruciating process.
How the misunderstanding arose that Catholics think they can buy their way into heaven, is involved with history more than 500 years old. For a millennium of Christendom between roughly 410 and 1410, there was a Medieval civilization with harmony between faith and government.
Many small farmers would cluster around the manor house of a military lord who would protect them, in exchange for a certain fixed obligation of labor and agricultural produce. In most cases, those "serfs" had much more leisure than factory workers of the industrial revolution; there were a large number of holy days without work, and except for planting and harvesting, there were long stretches of idle time.
Another large sector of the economy surrounded monasteries, where the monks developed most of the farming practices that stabilized the serfs and their manorial lords. The monks who worked those monastic lands were sworn to poverty, so that monasteries built up large accumulations of economic value over decades and centuries of labor.
At the beginning, when lands were being cleared and put into production there weren't prominent town fairs ruled by merchants and bankers. Money wasn't used for sustenance, not even much barter occurred, life was mostly agrarian.
Charity was woven into the economy of monasteries. It was estimated that you only need travel 12 miles in medieval England between monasteries, where you could get a meal and minimal lodging for free, based on need. And the charity was also spiritual, including the ancient Catholic principle of prayer for the dead, which is biblical. (See "prayer for the dead" in the original King James Bible in the comment.)
There were foundations and benefices for praying for the dead, that allowed a person of means to support monasteries' charitable works, and in proportional response the monks would pray for the souls of the donors.
It happened at the close of the middle ages, that militarily strong nobles cast their eyes on the labor value accumulated by the poverty-sworn monks of the monasteries, which those nobles perceived as monetary wealth, especially where gold and jewels had been donated by the devout to adorn churches.
(Protestant writer William Cobbett wrote in his 1824 "A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland", an anecdote, that an incredibly valuable, hand illustrated bible was stripped of it's bejeweled, gold cover, the much more valuable hand-illumined manuscript, thrown in the mud and trampled by horses hooves by raiders suppressing the monasteries in Henry VIII's England.)
A new religion growing up around this seizure of monastic lands and valuables, that sought to discredit the Catholic Church, spread the black legend that the "sale of indulgences" was abusive. But this was very exceptional. Today the stipend of a Mass said for the dead is $10.
What are you getting at? What faulty thinking are you trying to point to? be specific so that everyone knows, Els.
Nah. The concept that you state is lodged in the metaphysical arguable indistinct imprecise realm of allegory. the favorite sandbox of Catholicism, which Lutheran theology has not completely abandoned, being still "Reformers" rather than imitators of the New Testament independent autonomous /Christ-headed assemblies that proceed without supra-local-church accountability except to its Head and Intercessor to the God and Father of Himself, local assemblies that have direct access to and guidance from Him.
Your approach here evades the elements of a literal historical grammatical contextual hermeneutic, so that it may yet cling to falser beliefs that seem to comfort naive pre-Erasus denominations and their ill-educated hell-fearing congregations, deprived of escape from that threat tht is used to control them.
No, the water baptism by immersion is of the same purpose after Jesus' Cross-death as it did before. It is simply the rite of induction of a Christ-believer and -follower into the Company of The Committed as recognized and approved recruits into discipleship, made known to all by their public confession of confidence and fidelity in their Captain and His power to save them from all evil, even from themselves. The baptism may be exactly compared to the rite of swearing-in of a recruited volunteer to a branch of the United States Armed Forces to a well-defined term of service and authority to which the inductee will be accountable without question.
Scripture backs this view so well that, although many make themselves blind to it, the principle is unarguable from God's point of view. There is no such thing as a Scripturally-based paedobaptism in the temporal sphere. Any denomination clinging to that has a foundational false doctrine in its visible manifestation.
Sorry about that, Luircin, but it is true. What I can tell you is that in the last 51 years of my second birth, I have been exposed to and participated in just such independent autonomous New Testament-prototyped assemblies and found that all of them have two insuperable ordinances, the first of which is water baptism by immersion of the self-professed servant of Jesus, Lord and Christ; the second beind regularly observing the Remembramce Supper the breaking of blessed bread and partaking of the fruit of the vine, to be drunk new; emblems of His Passion, Both Ordinances are unarguably commnded by Him in person, before His Ascension. The baptism did NOT include that of infants, nor partial exposure to the baptizing medium. And none of these local assemblies counted themselves to supra-church uninspired, fallible, self-empowered humans interfering with access to its spiritual Head The Christ.
That took me a long way from the Methodism into which churchianity I was born, but from it not saved until the age of 34. As a PK, I grieved at the ongoing allegiance of my minister father to the conduct of that denomination that kept on increasing its rejection of the doctrine of the Apostles, and failing in the heralding of the Gospel of Jesus, now so grossly evident. Are you hearing this, my FRiend?
I agree with the first, but not the second, and definitely not the third!
And Pete agrees with me:
Yes.
Sigh...
The apostles and elders, your brothers,
To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia:
Greetings.
24 We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. 25 So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul— 26 men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 27 Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. 28 It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: 29 You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.
Farewell.
30 So the men were sent off and went down to Antioch, where they gathered the church together and delivered the letter. 31 The people read it and were glad for its encouraging message.
Shouldn't FReepers share the gladness?
placemarker
Guilt by association is a logical fallacy, as is begging the question.
I freely admit that I simply stated what I believe; health issues currently make my brain too fuzzy to lay out full arguments. But doing nothing but gainsaying me does not an argument make either.
Having said that, I believe that no one’s salvation is overtly in danger by what you believe, so it’s not really worth getting into a public argument over. Not when the SDAs and RCCs will use it as propaganda.
Ah yes, the meandering Elsie. Are we about to get an elsithon?
Well, it makes sense to me, so there! Nya nya, et cetera et cetera.
And not worth giving the usual suspects propaganda fodder by getting into a public argument over.
"When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, (though Jesus himself baptized not, but* his disciples,) he left Judaea, and departed again into Galilee" (Jn. 4:1-3 AV)Jesus' baptism was not to the same objectives as that of John the Baptizer (unto repentance); it was induction upon approval by the baptizer (unto discipleship, Mt. 11:29), the rite of induction into the select company of professed believers of Jesus as rabbi, Master, a rite instituted by Him, prefiguring the ordinance of baptism of a professed believer as a member into the local assembly conducting it.
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* ἀλλά = but; an exception according to Thayer, properly rendered "other than" contextually (Acts 26:22, 2 Cor. 1:13 typically)
The drama involved figuratively represented by the total immersion into water is the figurative of death by drowning of the old soul stained with original sin and sinning in the world, followed by the resurrection of a new person born in the spirit (but residing in the old body)bwith a new, righteous, unstained spirit, and eventually soul and body, unto whom the righteousness of Jesus is imputed, and membership in His Heavenly Ekklesia (Heb. 12:23) confirmed.
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A username is not appearing in the tagline identifying this post. Is this you, Elsie? Why does this seem to be an attempt to draw attention away from your own water baptism? If so, what was the meaning or purpose of it?
I can only imagine that metmom will rip the feathers right off your post and it will appear as the naked fowl it is - exposed as unbiblical for the world to see.
Getting popcorn!
Metmom is of course correct that circumcision did not covel eternal life to the Jewish boychild. If circumcision waqs essentail for eternal life received by the Spirit taking up residence in the Jewish boychild then what of the girlchild? Reqason is not the strong suit of Catholicism. In fact, that religion demands one NOT reason from Biblical texts because the ORG has stolen that function for its priestly class and that class is rife with dead soul demonic servants and dupes!
UI look forward to the evisceration metmom could put on Murph for his rebuking hwer truth calling it grievous error. The absurdities in Catholicism need to be exposed NOW, before the talking mule Francis can institute chrislam.
LOL, big fingers little keys and near blindness ... what a mix!
Jesus knew what baptism was and if He had meant baptism in John 3, He would certainly have used the word. Birth by water is natural human birth, amniotic fluid.
Peter also tells us that the baptism that confers spiritual life is NOT water baptism.
1 Peter 3:21 Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
At the Council at Jerusalem in Acts 15, baptism was not even mentioned. If it was essential for salvation, then it was a pretty serious oversight on the part of the disciples.
Paul also told us in 1 Corinthians 1 that he was sent to preach, not to baptize. If baptism were required for salvation, then why would Jesus have told him that and not commanded him to make sure and baptize as well?
1 Corinthians 1:14-17 I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
The power is in the message and preaching, not in the baptism.
Circumcision never saved anyone. Observing Passover never saved anyone. The pharisees did those and Jesus made it clear that they were not saved.
Salvation is not through religious acts, rituals, ceremonies, or observances.
Those things are a physical representation of a spiritual reality, but do not cause the spiritual reality. They reflect the spiritual reality that already exists.
Colossians 2:16-23 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.
If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
The Catholic religion makes the symbols, the representations the reality and that is not what God ever did in Scripture.
It’s faith. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, BEFORE he was circumcised or did any other thing. Simply for taking God at His word aka, exercising faith. And he didn’t have to “prove” it to anyone.
It’s always fascinating to watch any adherent
of a gay & pagan religion explain the meaning of Scripture.
🧐🍿
With weather like THIS!?
I’m doing a lot of winter season tree cleanup these last couple of days.
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