Posted on 02/03/2018 6:09:12 AM PST by tiredofallofit
Some time ago, I read the short book Are We Together? A Protestant Analyzes Catholicism written by the late Reformed preacher R.C. Sproul. It was a good read; I thought that Sproul treated this controversy with a degree of fairness and accuracy that was not present in other books that I have read on this subject. He basically laid the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Westminster Confession side-by-side as he worked through the major differences. Sure, there were some snarky comments here and there but I overlooked these since it was clear that the book was being targeted mostly at people who already agreed with him.
By the time I was finished with the book, however, a question loomed large in my mind. Clearly, a great gulf exists between Catholics and Protestants. Anyone who knows history shouldn’t need much convincing of this. But there is an even more important question that cannot be ignored. Forget about unity among Protestants and Catholics. I think that the Lord will come back before that happens. What about Protestants? Are they together? Are they unified on the important issues? Do Protestants really have a leg to stand on when confronting Catholics?
(Excerpt) Read more at runningawayfrommychurch.com ...
You conveniently overlooked the East-West Schism.
You would have been more accurate if you written this:
33 AD to ~200/300 AD NT Christianity
~200/300 to 1054 Roman Catholicism
1054 East West Schism
1054-1517 Roman Catholicism
1517-Reformation
1517 - present Protestant
1517 - present Roman Catholicism....Vatican I or Vatican II?
There are more details to hash out but this gives the big picture as least in the West.
I started life in the Catholic Church and got so confused that by age 15 i decided to g o the agnostic route. 36 years later, I finally heard the message I needed to hear in a nondenominational church and never looked back.
Hell no.
Christians of ANY AND ALL STRIPES are being slaughtered in the Middle East...........By muslims of ANY AND ALL FACTIONS (whilst killing EACH OTHER, BTW).............
..........and NOBODY on the side of the Cross DOES ONE DAMN THING about it. (Or seems to care—Saudi $$$$, anyone?)
CRICKETS!! (50 million slaughtered babies here in the USA, too—or is it 60?) (Who’s counting?)
Can you provide an example of legalism in the Catholic Church? Do you mean like the requirement that you should go to Mass once a week? Or that you should help the poor? Or confess your sins?
Exactly - trying to claim one needs to keep doing stuff to be worthy and making other mortals vital to whether or not one is saved - like they don’t believe the Bible and what God/Jesus did for us.
This guy is describing the fruits of the last 500 years of the ‘about 2,000 swine’ years that was predicted in the scriptures.
If the last 500 years were going to be much different than the first 1,500 since His Resurrection, then there would have only been about 1500 swine,not 2,000, that had demons entered them and drowned in the sea of death.
There would have only been about 1,500 cubits (instead of about 2,000) between the ark of the covenant and Israel when passing into the Promised land.(Joshua 3:4)
Those two ‘about 2,000’ mentions are prophetic of the last about 2,000 years since His Resurrection.
And the last ‘about 2,000’ years was prophesied to be the distance spiritual Israel was to have from the ark of the covenant before passing over to the Promised land.
And the last ‘about 2,000’ years was also prophesied to be the number of years demons would enter swine (unclean,as in, unclean teachings/doctrines) and drown them in the sea of death.
lots of unclean, demonic,swine teachings are consumed in religion these days.
That’s why His law says swine is unclean. Not only a natural picture but a spiritual picture- some read that instruction and just think it has to do with bacon,sausage and ham..
Protestants as much as they may disagree on some things agree on one thing - Unity is in Christ, as a spiritual, not temporal, marriage of Christ and His Church - those Christ KNOWS AS HIS, wherever they be among, or beyond, the human institutions claiming to be churches of Christ. To Protestants, temporal unity is a concern mostly only of Catholics, as their essential protest against Protestants is the lack of Protestant allegiance to Catholicism.
And by unity you mean...
All Protestants believe the same things about communion?
And celebrate it the same way?
All have a single translation of Scripture?
We all interprete it the same way?
Or better yet have a single leader telling us what the interpretation is?
Kinda like a Pope?
If you keep doing the same thing you keep getting the same result.
Yeah, we Protestants have many, many differences of opinion, and we do get into arguments al the time. But none of us is perfect, therefore none of us is going to get it right. Healthy disagreement gets us closer to the truth.
Something about loving each other as I have loved you seems like a command to do good works.
Pretty clear that asking Christ into our hearts as our Savior is what's required to be saved.
God told us that when H made the New Covenant, For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.
Even Paul, who had met the risen Jesus and who was chosen to be a purveyor of the Word, lamented that he kept finding himself doing things he wouldn't do and not doing things he would do.
And even Jesus told us that loving God with all our being and loving our neighbors as ourselves (loving each other as He loved us) was how to be right....Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
The problem with the various religions is they try to interpret what the Bible says and then make up stuff that isn't laid out because it appeals to their sensibilities - "If God/Jesus said this then I think we need to one up what we were told to 'make sure'"
Where is the unity in the Roman church?
There are at least 3 major factions - 1)the Jesuit/Liberation Theology/Social Justice Warriors, 2) the traditional Trentians, and 3) the Vatican II reformers in between the other two. Pope Francis would represent group 1, Pope Benedict group 3, and the much smaller group 2, probably someone like Mother Angelica.
Briefly;
Why not conscentrate on areas of agreement rather than differences?
Catholics have many differences as do protestants
BUT at the core we all believe in Christ, crucified and risen as an offering to satisfy our need for salvation.
**Are Protestants Together?**
Not like Catholics are all together — celebrating one Mass — despite differences in language.
There is no unity between truth and apostasy no matter by what term you denominate it, by what title you call it. There is no unity between people who believe the sine qua non, the essential fundamentals of the Christian faith, accurately described as fundamentalists, and those who claim to be Christian while using that term against them as if it were pejorative.
“Come out from among them!” saith the Lord.
(Excerpt) Read more at
No. I’m taking your advice and running away from your church blog.
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